- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Myles Brand, the man responsible for the firing of basketball coach Bobby Knight for his bad manners at Indiana University, died on Wednesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 67 years of age.
Brand was the the fourth president of the NCAA. He had been responsible for increasing commercial opportunities and deepening revenue allocation among member schools.
He will be most remembered for the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate program. That program tracked the success rate of each member team in keeping athletes on pace to graduate. Teams that fell behind faced sanctions, such as losing athletic scholarships.
“He led the effort to produce the most significant academic reform in the history of the NCAA,” said chancellor of the University System of Maryland, Dr. William Kirwan. “It really burrowed down to the individual coaches and programs, and made them responsible in a way that never existed before.”
The senior NCAA staff will manage the national office until the executive committee sees fit to decide upon an interim president, spokeswoman Dana Thomas state in an e-mail.
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