Posted on 08/14/2002 12:49:02 PM PDT by HAL9000
INDIANAPOLIS -- An Atlanta company has interviewed more than 80 candidates to replace outgoing NCAA president Cedric Dempsey, a member of the search committee told The Associated Press.The search committee has not yet received the names, but expects the field to be narrowed later this month, said University of Tulsa president Bob Lawless, chairman of the NCAA's executive committee, which must approve the new president.
Dempsey, who has led college athletics' largest governing body since 1994, announced in January he would retire when his term ends at the end of the year.
"The search firm has been out collecting nominations and applications and has gone through a process of checking some level of references," Lawless said. "They've interviewed a large number of candidates, or potential candidates, but we're not yet at a place where they can come to us with recommended names."
The NCAA hired the search company, Baker-Parker, in April.
Lawless said he expects the committee to interview three or four finalists and hopes to choose the new president by late October, so a new president could take office Jan. 2.
There are strong opinions within the NCAA about the qualities needed in the organization's next leader, and who best fits those requirements.
Jean Lenti Ponsetto, chairwoman of the NCAA's Championships and Competition Cabinet, said the group needs an advocate for student-athletes and academic integrity.
"We really need someone from the outside, and I think Bill Bradley and Donna Shalala are two people I would recommend," Ponsetto said.
Shalala served as secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton White House and became president at the University of Miami in June 2001. She has also been chancellor at the University of Wisconsin where she became the first woman to lead a Big Ten institution.
But Shalala said she does not want the job.
"It never has interested me," she said. "I have a job I really love, and actually it is something that I have never considered."
Bradley served three terms as a senator from New Jersey before retiring from the Senate in 1997. He lost the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination to Al Gore.
Before turning to politics, Bradley played with the New York Knicks from 1967-77 and was captain of the United States' 1964 Olympic gold-medal winning basketball team. He graduated from Princeton in 1965, when he led the Tigers to the Final Four, and was a Rhodes Scholar.
Bradley now works for Allen & Co., a New York investment company, but was out of the country and unavailable for comment.
There was once a desire within the NCAA to name a university president as the NCAA's leader, but Ponsetto, Lawless and Shalala all said the search must be broader.
"I don't think it has to be a president," Shalala said. "We have some very good conference commissioners who should be considered."
Lawless has said athletic directors and politicians also would be in the running and that diversity would be considered. Each of the NCAA's three previous leaders, Dempsey, Dick Schultz and Walter Byers were white males.
What Lawless wants now, though, is someone who cannot only lead the organization but who can also unify the issues of larger schools in Division I athletics with the needs of smaller schools in Divisions II and III.
"We're looking for a woman or a man with leadership potential," he said. "Someone who can really lead and get a diverse organization to have enough commonality within the three divisions."
Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
That is just out and out Slander!
She won fair and square and you know it. Stop spreading lies.
The pool may be large but it is also shallow.
Probably not, but you can bet those offensive team nicknames will be outlawed.
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