BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (U-WIRE) — The man who fired Bob Knight and advocated academics over athletics is set to run the nation’s college sports machine.
Thursday in a surprising announcement, the NCAA unanimously named Indiana University President Myles Brand its president-elect. His five-year contract begins on the first day of the new year. Brand’s new position will force him to resign IU’s top job.
Brand’s acceptance of this position leaves a void in IU’s highest leadership position, and he said the process happened quickly. The new NCAA president barely had time to personally inform the IU board of trustees before announcing his resignation.
“Well, at first it was a very difficult decision, and when I finish in December, it will be with great regret,” Brand said late Thursday night from Indianapolis. “I enjoyed working with the faculty, the administrative staff and the students at IU. This is an opportunity to have an impact on a national level. It’s an opportunity I could not pass by.”
One of three finalists interviewed early Thursday afternoon, Brand was unanimously voted to the position by early evening.
He becomes the fourth president in the history of the association, and follows Cedric Dempsey into office. Dempsey announced his retirement from the position, where he spent eight years. The NCAA Executive Committee started its seven-month search for a new president soon after Dempsey’s announcement that he would leave.
Brand was the University of Oregon’s 14th president, immediately preceding University President Dave Frohnmayer. His tenure was marked by significant reductions in higher education funding after the passage of the property-tax-limiting Measure 5 in 1990. Brand had to make what he called at the time “incredibly tough” decisions about which University programs to cut. He also responded to Measure 5 by instituting The Oregon Campaign, an aggressive private-gift fundraising campaign that raised more than $255 million when it ended in 1998.
The NCAA Executive Committee accepted 118 nominations for possible candidates for its top job, before narrowing the field to 11 finalists in September.
The group cut the finalists to three, and the subsequent announcement of an appointee took only a short time.
“My understanding is that has developed fairly recently,” IU spokesman Bill Stephan said. “He was contacted by the NCAA officials whether he might be interested. This was an extraordinary opportunity on a national scale. He will take on the responsibility that will go along with the job.”
This announcement came as a surprise to many at IU as well. Because of the nomination and voting process that the NCAA follows, the screening process is kept under wraps.
In this case, the time period between an offer and an acceptance was short.
“From the beginning it was an important consideration to not at all speak about the candidates,” IU Athletics Director Michael McNeely said. “I’m not surprised, because it is a very prestigious role. It provides great opportunity and great challenges.”
Brand, 60, has been IU’s president since 1994, but arguably will be best remembered for imposing a “zero tolerance” policy on former men’s basketball coach Bob Knight. Brand later fired Knight for breaking the agreement.
During his tenure as president, IU private donations led all public universities, and Time magazine named IU “College of the Year” among research universities in September 2001. Brand also helped unify the IU Medical Center Hospital and Riley Hospital for Children with Methodist Hospital to form Clarian Health.
IU also enjoyed record enrollment numbers under Brand.
“I personally can attest through the things that the rest of student body doesn’t see,” said IUSA President Bill Gray. “This man has done everything in his power to better IU and help its students in any way.”
Brand also made headlines recently for his February 2001 NCAA News article, “Presidents Have Cause, Means to Reduce Arms,” where he likened the continually increasing spending on college athletics programs to an military “arms race” and suggested that the spending was harming academic progress at colleges nationwide.
“The path that we are now following leads to an ever-widening gap between the academic and athletics cultures on our college campuses,” Brand wrote. “Over time, it could well lead to college programs that differ little from professional ones. It already has led to a growing sense among members of the public — and even members of the university community — that athletics success is the main goal of too many institutions of higher learning.
“We must get off that path. We must make certain that academic concerns are first and foremost. To do that, we don’t have to turn off the game. We just have to turn down the volume.”
One result of Brand’s article was a resolution circulated by some university faculties, urging college presidents to slow the “arms race.” Such a resolution was passed by the University of Oregon Senate on May 9, 2001. The minutes of the meeting and a copy of the resolution are available at http://www.uoregon.edu/~uosenate/dirsen001/09May01minutes.html.
Emerald editor in chief Michael J. Kleckner contributed to this report.