Maryland Business

By: jackie.sauter

While M&T Bank’s name is almost synonymous with the Ravens, M&T Bancorp’s new acquisition Provident Bankshares Corp’s name is very much tied in with another sport in the state — Division III college basketball.

For the last four years, Provident Bank has been the title sponsor of the Pride of Maryland Tournament, a three-day championship played in November between Maryland’s nine Division III teams to crown the state’s Division III basketball champ. (The schools are spread across four conferences — four in the Capital Athletic Conference, three in the Centennial Conference, and one apiece in the Landmark Conference and Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference.)

The vision for the tournament began with Bill Nelson, men’s basketball coach at Johns Hopkins University, and Brett Adams, athletic director and men’s basketball coach at Stevenson University, 10 years ago but the idea was stalled by conference scheduling concerns. As the story goes, Nelson and Adams decided to forge ahead while flying out together to the NCAA Division I Championships five years later.

The first tournament was played in 2005 with Provident Bank coming on as the title sponsor the following year.

The bank also sponsors a scholarship associated with the tournament and donates $1,000 to the general scholarship fund of each of the nine schools participating in the tournament, also known as the Provident Pride Tournament.

“Provident’s corporate culture perfectly compliments the ideals that represent Division III basketball,” a tournament description says.

Buffalo, N.Y.-based M&T Bank touts its “long history of civic and charitable support” on its Web site and there are many cases where the parent company absorbs the sponsorship duties of its acquisition. And, in the SEC filing accompanying news of the deal M&T said it would continue “Provident’s charitable contributions.”

But in times when charitable donations are dwindling, will the cost of supporting a “Maryland pride” Division III basketball tournament still be in the best interests of an out-of-state bank?

LIZ FARMER, Business Writer