Myles Brand, 1942-2009

Myles Brand, president of the NCAA and former president of Indiana University, died yesterday, too young, at the age of 67. An able scholar and administrator, Brand was best known for his confrontation with legendary IU basketball coach Bobby Knight in the late 1990s. I was working in Indiana government then and met both men, briefly, during their time of discontent.

Knight is bigger than he seems on television, a consequence of being surrounded by giant basketball players who strain the borders of the screen. He also has a palpable charisma, almost shockingly so, and within a few seconds of meeting him you understand how a man with his intelligence and drive could harness that presence to mentor and cajole generations of young men to 902 career victories and three national championships. You also understand how devastating those energies could be if misdirected in anger and frustration.

Brand, by contrast, was easy-mannered — at least, that’s the way he was when hosting a cocktail reception for a group of state legislators on whom his university depended for money, which is when we met. The Knight situation was building toward a boil then; the coach was on some form of probation but had not yet lost control for the final time. Brand was a philosopher by training and talked about Aristotle’s ideas of virtuous action. He hoped — sincerely, I think — that Knight would act to mend his spirit and his ways. It didn’t happen, of course, and a few months later Brand was being burned in effigy outside his home.

Of the perpetual scandal of intercollegiate athletics, Ewald B. Nyquist of the Middle States Association once said, “It is almost as if the academic community were afraid of having its otherwise undisputed virtue and exemplary conduct become monotonous.” Myles Brand believed in virtue, understood it, in the most elevated and practical senses. He worked hard to bring more virtue to higher education, and for that we should all be grateful.