A Closer Look: Eric Reveno

Photo by Robert Holmgren

STANFORD BASKETBALL fans spent a lot of last season trying to figure out how a team that lost Brevin Knight to the NBA could end up as the most successful Stanford team since the dawn of the dunk. By the time the Cardinal was competing in the Final Four, there were many answers, like the glare of Art Lee and the muscle of Mark Madsen. But here's an in-gredient everybody missed --the MBA of Eric Reveno.
       OK, maybe first-year assistant coach Reveno, MBA '95, didn't carry the team on his big-as-a-barn shoulders, but he was one of the team's freshest ingredients, and he says the motivation, organization, and teamwork taught in business school are essential every day on the hardwood.
       As a player, Reveno was a 6-foot-8-inch, 250-pound freight train for coach Mike Montgomery in Montgomery's first years at Stanford. After college, he was recruited to Tokyo to play in the Japan League. He found himself in a rather unusual sports venture, a pro corporate league. Reveno worked for Japan Energy at a desk but also on the court, competing against other companies' teams. And while some of the league's players did little during their office hours, Reveno became engrossed in crude oil analysis.
       In 1993 when he entered the GSB, Reveno seemed to move away from sports. But during school and after, as president of the Riekes Center, a Menlo Park nonprofit that helps teen athletes, he kept his basketball contacts alive. Eventually, coach Montgomery called.
       It wasn't the first time. Years earlier Montgomery had tried to discourage Reveno from coaching, pointing out that it's not the most lucrative or secure thing a person can do with his MBA. "It was funny," Reveno said. "In the interview once again he was trying to talk me out of it. He basically presented a pretty bleak scenario of the job, but it just felt right."
       Reveno plans to test coaching for five years. Some MBAs look at the degree as a pair of "golden handcuffs," he believes, explaining that they feel condemned to go for the jobs with the biggest payouts. "People look at it backward," he said. "What finally convinced me to make the leap is that I view the MBA as a tremendous safety net."

--MARK SMOYER