Who Is Right Person for Job? : Colleges: Search for Schultz’s replacement as NCAA executive director will be a broad one, officials say.

When Business Week magazine reported on Dick Schultz’s appointment to the post of NCAA executive director six years ago, the article’s headline read: “Mr. Clean Comes to the NCAA.”

Now tinged with irony, that description and others like it will burn in the minds of those who take on the task of picking Schultz’s successor.

Schultz’s resignation, prompted by scrutiny of his ties to an improper loan program at the University of Virginia in the 1980s, has added at least one entry to the list of requirements for the executive director’s job: no surprises.

“The closet better be entirely clean,” said Frank Windegger, athletic director at Texas Christian and a member of the NCAA Executive Committee, the panel that will select Schultz’s successor. “I imagine it’s going to take a unique person to fill the role.”

Having served as athletic director at Cornell and Virginia--schools that traditionally have kept athletics in perspective--Schultz was indeed considered to be Mr. Clean when he succeeded Walter Byers as executive director in 1987.

Schultz’s resignation has left NCAA leaders with a feeling that Mr. Clean II simply might not exist, at least not within the ranks of conventional athletic administrators.

“You really wonder,” said Gregory O’Brien, University of New Orleans chancellor and chairman of the NCAA Presidents Commission. “Anybody with experience for the job, can they take the job?

“I think the search process will be a broad one. Presidents, athletic directors, people in other walks of life--they’ll all be considered. Bart Giamatti was commissioner of baseball (after leaving Yale University). Maybe somebody outside (college athletics) could do the job.”

Often crisscrossing the country at the controls of the NCAA’s own Lear jet, Schultz pushed hard for the reforms developed in recent years by the Presidents Commission, and his successor surely will have to plot a similar course.

“The reality of the politics of the NCAA now is that the Presidents Commission is controlling the agenda, which is as it should be,” said Wake Forest President Thomas Hearn, a member of the Presidents Commission. “And therefore the presidents, I think, would be quite unwilling to see anyone in that job whose commitment to that agenda is uncertain.”

The presidents’ power is such that several university chief executive officers, including Hearn and O’Brien, are expected to be among the leading candidates to replace Schultz.

Hearn said he isn’t interested in the job, but noted that giving it to a president would make sense.

“There is obviously merit to that,” he said, “because the Presidents Commission has become the leading force within the NCAA. But (the commission’s power) has come in complete alliance with the leadership of the (NCAA) Council, and (the alliance) has been sustained through Dick’s auspices.

“I think keeping that alliance is critical, and the first thing to do is find an executive director everyone can unite around.”

Other CEOs likely to be considered are Joseph Crowley, president of the University of Nevada and current president of the NCAA; Gerald Turner, University of Mississippi chancellor and former chairman of the Presidents Commission, and Charles Young, UCLA chancellor and a Presidents Commission member.

Young was in Japan on Wednesday and could not be reached, according to his office.

Also expected to be considered are Judy Sweet, athletic director at UC San Diego and a former NCAA president; Jim Delany, Big Ten Conference commissioner and a former NCAA enforcement representative; Cedric Dempsey, athletic director at the University of Arizona and current secretary-treasurer of the NCAA, and Andy Geiger, athletic director at the University of Maryland.