Trailblazing NBA Exec Donates $18M to UMD

A trailblazing marketing executive with the Chicago Bulls has committed to give $18 million to his alma mater, the University of Maryland, to support the athletics program that launched his career—and the new sports management program that he hopes will launch many others.

The university announced in December that Stephen Schanwald ’77 has directed $10 million to Maryland Athletics to support its top priorities and $8 million to the Robert H. Smith School of Business to endow its recently launched Sports Management Program and to provide scholarships for students taking courses in it.

In recognition of his generosity, the program as well as the Xfinity Center pavilion and football practice fields at Jones-Hill House will be named for him; the Stephen M. Schanwald-Russ Potts External Operations Suite in the Xfinity Center will honor him and his former mentor at UMD.

“Stephen Schanwald left an indelible imprint on the NBA,” says UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “Now he’s doing the same for the University of Maryland and current and future generations of students, student-athletes and Terps fans.”

Schanwald calls the unpaid internship he sought and held in Maryland Athletics for three years under Potts, who in 1970 became the first sports marketing director in the history of collegiate athletics, “the greatest decision I ever made.”

He joined the Bulls in 1987 and over the next 28 years, as executive vice president of business operations, he reimagined the action inside an arena between the whistles.

Gone was a halftime spent watching a ball cart “sitting at center court, waiting for the players to come out and shoot around,” as he recalls from his childhood. Inspired by Las Vegas-style magic shows, he recruited acrobats, Elvis impersonators and Blues Brothers-themed acts to transform 48-minute basketball games into two-and-a-half-hour spectacles.

Through the sale of suites, naming rights and signage, he funded the creation of the United Center arena in 1994. A pioneer of marketing pillars like corporate sponsorships, community relations, broadcasting and digital advertising, Schanwald was a “trailblazer in every sense of the word,” former NBA Commissioner David Stern once said.

By endowing UMD’s sports management program, Schanwald wants to give Terps a springboard into the industry. “Nothing feeds my soul more than helping people get ahead in life,” he says.

“This transformative investment, combined with our existing strong curricular and co-curricular opportunities, will make the Smith School a truly exceptional place for young people to launch a career in sports,” Smith School Dean Prabhudev Konana says.

Adds Damon Evans, the Barry P. Gossett Director of Athletics: “It is an honor to recognize Steve for his philanthropy at the University of Maryland and specifically with Maryland Athletics.”