Former Maryland soccer assistant Russell Payne interviewed after last season at Army, hoping to take over his first program after working under Sasho Cirovski with the Terrapins.
When he returned to College Park, he knew it was a job he wanted.
"He came back raving about his interaction with the athletic director, Kevin Anderson," Cirovski said. "That was a big pull for Russell to work, with Kevin. I remember the interaction at that point, that Russ was going to a great place because of the culture Kevin had built at Army."
Payne indeed left for West Point, but his new boss is about to become his old boss. Anderson was introduced as Maryland's new athletic director today, and while a firm start date isn't known yet, it will presumably be sometime in the coming weeks.
Anderson, who took over at Army in 2004 and had previous stops as an official at Stanford, California and Oregon State, deftly handled many of the issues tossed his way in his first media interaction at Maryland.
Yet as much as anything, it was his emphasis on personal consistency --- which he said he stressed to coaches when he met with them today --- that stood out as one of Anderson's most notable traits.
"You'll always know what the score and the time is," Anderson said. "There's not going to be any surprises, because if there are surprises, I haven't done my job and people that I work with haven't done their job. So we're going to be very clear. The coaches are going to be involved in everything we do. We're going to sit down and we're going to meet and I'm going to talk to them and they're going to talk to me about how they're recruiting. We're going to talk about budgets, because they're going to be part of everything that we do because this is a team thing. Everything we do is going to be inclusive."
In many ways, that's exactly what most coaches would welcome. By the job's competitive nature, any head coach knows his job security is dependent upon wins and losses to a certain extent.
Those aren't always fun facets of the profession. But a straight-forward boss at least makes it easier to plan and prepare for what needs to be done.
"I think it's tremendous," said Cirovski, who was joined by men's basketball coach Gary Williams, football coach Ralph Friedgen, women's basketball coach Brenda Frese and several other coaches at Anderson's introductory press conference. "One of the great qualities of leadership is
to be predictable, which means you don't have surprises, that people
know what you stand for, what you want and what you expect and those are
shared and you work in the same direction. He's that type of person. I
don't think you're going to get any fluff, and if he disagrees with you,
you're going to know. If he believes in something you're trying to do,
he's going to help you."
Anderson was cautious about offering extensive opinions on many specifics at Maryland --- understandably so for someone who just accepted the job in the last few days.
Among his insights ...
On the Maryland athletic department's financial situation: "Everywhere I've been there have been budget issues, so it's not a
unique challenge coming to the University of Maryland and having those
sorts of things. One of thing I talked to the staff about today is we're
going to try to come in and evaluate, we're going to see where we are
as a program, we're going to see where we are financially. ...
I'm not going make any snap judgments, but we will be fiscally responsible."
On how to function with a 27-sport department: "I think you first have to establish the expectations --- how teams and where they're going to compete and how they're going to compete. I have to look at all that before I make a comment to be fair to everybody. I think it's great for the institution to have that variety of sports that compete at this level. Sometimes, if you look at certain programs, you have to ask if it's fair to the student-athlete and can the institution support that number of teams. It's just a matter of looking at the data and going on from there and setting expectations. I think in the 60-to-90 days we'll be able to look at it."
Anderson and his new employees will probably spend much of the time getting accustomed to each other.
One of his old charges, as Cirovski well knows, is probably a little envious of the situation.
"I know Russell's very disappointed at the moment," Cirovski said. "He's shared that with me. But he's also very happy for this university."
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