Newly named interim President Jim Isch said during his first press conference today that the NCAA is fortunate Myles Brand left a well-defined agenda upon which the Association can build.
“In the coming months I intend to move that agenda,” Isch said. “To put that in simple terms, it will continue to focus on academic reform, fiscal responsibility, continued integration of athletics and academics and a continued emphasis on student-athlete well-being.”
Isch, NCAA senior vice president for administration and chief financial officer, said he will reach out to members of the athletics community in the next several days to continue to chart that course.
NCAA Executive Committee Chair Michael Adams, president at the University of Georgia, said Isch has the “unqualified and total support” of the four-member subcommittee that made the appointment, and that “there are good days ahead for the Association because of this appointment.”
As for a timetable to name a permanent replacement for Brand, who died September 16 after a nine-month battle with pancreatic cancer, Adams said no further information would be supplied until after the full Executive Committee holds its next regularly scheduled meeting October 29 in Indianapolis. Adams also declined comment on whether Brand’s successor would be a university president or someone outside of higher education.
“This will be a broad, open, national search for anyone who wishes to apply,” Adams said. “I don’t want to dwell on that today until I’ve had a chance to meet with the full Executive Committee. Our goal today is singular, and that is to introduce the interim president.”
Adams said while Brand had conferred with him about the future of the Association’s leadership position, Brand did not offer a suggestion on who his successor would be.
“He trusted the judgment of the appropriate committee and the decision was ours alone,” Adams said.
Isch was part of a four-person leadership team in the NCAA national office that helped direct Association operations during Brand’s illness. Isch pledged continued reliance on the other three – Bernard Franklin, executive VP of governance and membership; Greg Shaheen, senior vice president of basketball and business strategies; and Wallace Renfro, vice president and senior advisor to the president.
