The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- April 26, 1999

Spry's legacy is one of change, progress, humor

Senior staff member retires after 32 memorable years

BY KAY HAWES
STAFF WRITER

Much has changed in the 11,947 days Louis Spry has served the NCAA, and amazingly, he recalls most of it.

A born statistician, Spry is a counter. He is not the type who counts with dread; rather he is a precise man who carefully keeps track of innumerable details while still maintaining an eye for the big picture. He not only knows what he was doing on a Thursday 12 years ago, but why and how much it cost.

It's painfully obvious -- even to brand-new Association employees -- that Spry will be deeply missed after his retirement, which occurred April 16. Few people have his command of numbers, dates, events and people, and even fewer have his command of the Association's history.

Intercollegiate athletics has evolved over Spry's 32-year NCAA tenure, and Spry has had a box seat for the show. He's stepping down out of the press box, but he'll be in the stands for a while yet.

A changing landscape

When Spry launched his career with the NCAA on August 1, 1966, the Association had 24 employees, 21 championships and 582 member institutions in two divisions.

Spry was offered $7,000 to come to the NCAA. He had been the sports information director at West Texas State University, and before that he was the statistician for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

He also had served for a time -- two years, three months and 20 days -- in the Army. But Spry knew he had found his calling in intercollegiate athletics.

There have been seven U.S. presidential administrations in Spry's time at the NCAA, but only three executive directors, the position now referred to as NCAA president. And the NCAA has come a long way from being just a handful of folks in the Midland Building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It has seen billion-dollar television contracts and multimillion-dollar lawsuits, the addition of women's championships, revenue distribution, governance restructuring and a complete reorganization of the Division I legislative process.

But the Association has kept Spry, who began as a publications editor and worked his way up to his last title, associate executive director. Spry has touched the Association in a thousand ways -- as director of research, as recording secretary for the NCAA Council and Executive Committee, as assistant executive director, as chief financial officer and as Convention manager. He has invested the Association's money, overseen championships, administered the College World Series and hired some of the Association's longest-tenured and well-respected employees.

"Long after I have gone belly-up, there will be an NCAA," Spry said in a profile in the Association's employee newsletter, Home Court, in 1989, "But it will be different."

As usual, Spry's prediction was accurate. As Spry concludes his career with the Association, as the NCAA prepares to move 500 miles and three states away, there are now 340 employees, 81 championships and 1,239 member institutions in three different divisions. Spry has been there for it all.

A hard worker

Spry was born in 1936 in Buffalo County, Nebraska, during the height of the Great Depression. Spry learned the value of hard work toiling on the farm his parents, Charles Lloyd Spry and Alvina Katherine Spry, rented. Spry was the youngest of four boys.

Spry's brother "Smokey," formally known as Lowell, didn't always recognize his value. One of the Spry family tales is the time Smokey traded Louis to a friend for a Shetland pony. Had the pony been a Belgian draft horse instead of a little Shetland, the trade might have stuck.

"The only cash money the folks saw in those days was from a monthly pension check my dad received because he had been shot in World War I," Spry said. "The idea of anything that didn't work was foreign to Dad, and the pony was too small to do any work. So, the trade didn't go through."

The lesson Spry took away from his upbringing was that hard work mattered. It became a way of life.

"Money was never as important as a chance. When I was offered the job in 1966, I thought, 'If you give me a chance and let me get in and start working, I'll outwork the people on either side of me,' " Spry said. "I didn't know it, but that was exactly what (Walter) Byers was looking for."

Spry also adopted the first NCAA executive director's philosophy of service to the membership. "Mr. Byers always said, 'You work for the membership. It isn't the other way around.' I always tried to remember that. It's their organization, and they have the right to do whatever they want to with it. As a philosophy of working, it's a good one, I think."

An imprint on the future

One of the contributions Spry has made to the NCAA has been the hiring of individuals who have been significant in the Association's development over the last 20 years. He considers that fact one of his top accomplishments.

"I have certainly hired a couple of people who haven't worked out, but I hired a few people who have been mainstays in this organization. That's something I have taken a measure of pride in," Spry said. "I certainly didn't do their work, but I feel that I recognized their value and their potential. I guess the top one on that list would be Tom Jernstedt."

Spry hired Jernstedt in September 1972 to be the director of special events, which meant he was responsible for the NCAA championships program, and in particular the men's basketball championship.

And it seems that Jernstedt was indeed a good hire. He's stuck around for 27 years, and he's now the Association's senior vice-president.

"I am honored and privileged to have known Lou as a friend and colleague for the past 27 years," Jernstedt said. "I will forever be indebted to him for giving me the opportunity to join him on the NCAA staff."

Other names on Spry's list are familiar as well. He recalls hiring Wally Renfro, now director of public relations and the Association's main spokesperson, to be a publications editor in the NCAA's branch office in Phoenix in 1972. Renfro was only 26 years old at the time and, Renfro admits, he was a little rough around the edges.

"Louis was and has been over the years, remarkably indulgent of staff with whom he has worked closely," Renfro said. "And he's allowed them to have their head and let them press forward with their ideas. He's also given them counsel so they didn't step in the deepest holes. He would let you step in holes, just never the deep ones."

Spry hired Frank Marshall to be director of accounting in 1985, and Marshall would eventually become the group executive director for finance and business services. (Marshall is now the NCAA 2000 project manager, a position he plans to hold until the NCAA completes its transition to Indianapolis.)

"We were both friends and co-workers," Marshall said. "The biggest contention between us in 14 years was the fact that I work in pencil. He has always said that it reflected a lack of confidence. I said no, it reflected a passion to correct mistakes."

"My first lasting impression of Lou was in my interview. I started to say something, and he stopped me very politely and said, 'You'll be able to get your oar in the water in a little while.' I'll never forget that."

Spry notes that both Jernstedt and Marshall eventually ended up as his supervisors, a fact that Spry said simply affirmed his initial feelings about them. "I believe you hire the best people you can find," he said. "I knew that those two people, if they stayed hitched, would be successful in this organization and would be influential in this organization for a long time. There were other people I could have hired who could have gotten the work done, but they never would have progressed in the organization.

"There's something that I learned about association work a long time ago: You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit. I tried to hire the best person I could at all times, and I don't think that diminishes you as a manager. It may even reflect well on you and on your department."

Spry also knows a good assistant when he sees one. He hired Nancy Roll in 1974, and she has worked with him ever since. She changed departments when he did, and her duties have changed over the years when his have. "We have changed from what we first did any number of times over the years, but I always worked just for him, and that suited me fine," Roll said.

Spry and Roll are both detail-oriented people, a fact that probably had a lot to do with their long-term work relationship. "He is excellent on details, and I really respect that," she said. "But his concentration on details doesn't keep him from seeing how everything works together."

Spry's attention to detail has resulted in well-planned NCAA Conventions for as long as most staff members can remember.

"He's made many things look so easy," Renfro said. "He's made running the Convention look easy, which it certainly is not. But that appearance is largely because of Louis' ability to break huge projects down into well-organized steps that, when one follows another, result in a whole that is flawless."

Full commitment

It's impossible to detail every contribution Spry has made to the Association, in part because he has made so many over such a long period of time. In many ways, he has served as an example for staff members who came after him.

"I have never met a more loyal, committed and dedicated staff member with the Association," Jernstedt said. "His belief and practice of serving the membership has been remarkable and has served as an inspiration to his colleagues on the staff."

His work has not gone unrecognized in the world of intercollegiate athletics either.

Wayne Duke, one of the first employees of the Association and later the commissioner of the Big Eight Conference and then the Big Ten Conference, worked with Spry on numerous occasions.

"I have often been described as the 'last survivor of the NCAA,' " Duke said, referring to his status as one of the original employees. "I'd like to pass that mantle on to Lou now, for he bridges the past of the NCAA with the needs of the present and the vision of the future."

Spry's dedication to the Association will be long remembered by those who knew his work.

"His recall of people and events that pertain to the growth and development of the NCAA is incredible," Marshall said. "His ability to interact with the membership and be in sync with them, and his commitment to intercollegiate athletics and to the NCAA are without equal. He exemplified the NCAA and committed himself 100 percent to the organization," Marshall said.

Spry has been involved with many prominent Association issues over the years. "In 1973, I had the pleasure of being the staff liaison to the reorganization committee, which put together a three-division plan that is basically still in place today," he recalled. "We had the first special Convention that year and the delegates approved the plan in about 35 minutes, and there was just one amendment to the plan."

Another fond memory for Spry is the development of the revenue-distribution plan. "Frank helped with that, and appropriately enough we were the number crunchers, the bean counters, in that deal," he said. "When a member of the committee said, 'Here's what we'd like to see happen,' we were able to do that. I've always felt like that was a contribution."

If Spry has fond memories of his Association work, there are those who have fond memories of him as well.

"There are not very many people in intercollegiate athletics above the age of 40 who don't know Louis Spry," Renfro said. "Louis is symbolic of what so many people hold dear about the state of intercollegiate athletics, that they now think is gone. The fact of the matter is that nothing is gone -- times just change.

"He has loved this organization and intercollegiate athletics, and he has worked diligently to preserve what he thinks are the very best things about both."

A lasting impression

It's easy for Spry to name what he will miss most about the NCAA, "Well, there isn't any question. I'll miss the people," he said, noting that seeing old friends won't be easy after the Association moves to Indiana.

"I'd always envisioned that if I ever got old enough to retire, I'd be able to come over and have lunch with some of my cronies once in a while," he said. "I'll still be able to do that, but I'll have to leave at 4 a.m. and get back at midnight. It's going to be a longer drive than I had anticipated. I'll still do it, though."

Spry also will miss his favorite day-to-day tasks. "I suppose I will miss managing the cash, the daily discussion with the bank and investing money, trying to get the best return for the Association, trying to have enough on hand to pay our bills, things like that."

How would Spry like to be remembered? "I hope I would be remembered as a person who always tried to do right, even when it didn't necessarily benefit me," he said. "And I hope that the people who worked for me over the years will feel that I always gave them a modicum of credit for their part in whatever my group or team achieved, and I hope they would always do the same for the people that work for them.

"I hope I will also be remembered as one who treated everybody well. When you are the chief financial officer, you have to make decisions that are not sometimes popular, but I always did what I thought was the right thing."

What's next?

So, what does the future hold for the Sprys?

"Basically, I don't intend to do a darn thing, and I'm not going to start until noon," Spry said of his post-retirement plans.

Seriously, though, he and his wife Marilyn, who assisted him with the 1999 NCAA Convention, have agreed to be consultants for the 2000 NCAA Convention. And, of course, he will be the official scorer at the College World Series.

"Marilyn and I also intend to travel. This year our No. 1 goal is to take an Alaskan cruise," he said. "And I have a couple of opportunities to do some consulting work on meetings and Conventions, but I don't want to get too bogged down. I have to find time to reorganize my music collection. And, I decided that I'm not going to retire and be on the road alone. Marilyn and I will travel together."

He'll take time to eat Mexican food -- his favorite. And he plans to read the entire works of Zane Grey, a passion he inherited from his father. You also can bet that he will have one incredibly organized music collection -- mostly bluegrass, country, folk music and blues -- carefully cataloged by song.

Spry also will try to stay busy enough that he doesn't drive his wife crazy. "Marilyn, of course, has to get used to the concept of twice the husband and half the money. I'm afraid she will realize she married me for better or for worse but not for lunch."

Spry will surely miss the work that has become so much a part of him. But he doesn't really consider it work at all. "As Samuel Clemens put it in 'Tom Sawyer,' 'It's only work if you'd rather be doing something else,'" he said.

"I can truthfully say that in 37 years there's not been more than one day a year that I haven't looked forward to going to work, and there's not been more than one day a year that I haven't looked forward to going home."

On April 16, Spry's 63rd birthday, he relinquished his title as the NCAA employee with the greatest seniority, a designation he had held for two years and four months. On that day, Spry ceased counting the innumerable items and events he had counted for so long, but his influence on the Association -- and on the people who make up its headquarters staff and its membership -- will continue to count for a very long time.