Search Committee Recommends Schiller : Olympics: Southeastern Conference commissioner is expected to be named, for the second time, as executive director of United States Olympic Committee.

A search committee unanimously voted Wednesday to recommend that Harvey Schiller return as the U.S. Olympic Committee’s executive director, confident that his second term will last longer than the 19 days of his first one in 1988.

Although Schiller still must be approved by the USOC’s executive board next week in a meeting at Denver, his appointment is considered a foregone conclusion. He resigned Wednesday as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

Schiller, 50, has been in that position since Sept. 15, 1986 except for a brief period beginning on Jan. 1, 1988, when he assumed the role of USOC’s executive director. Citing personal and family reasons, he submitted his resignation Jan. 20 and returned to the SEC. He said later that anxiety about a cancerous growth on his face had clouded his judgment.

Within days of his resignation, Schiller told USOC President Robert Helmick that he wanted to be considered when the executive director’s position became available.

That has happened sooner than anyone expected at the time.

In February of ‘88, the USOC’s executive board extended Baaron Pittenger’s contract as executive director until December, 1990. He had been interim executive director for four months before Schiller’s election, then officially assumed the position when Schiller resigned.

But even before the end of the year, the USOC decided to begin the transition to a new executive director in 1989. In an interview with the search committee, Pittenger, 64, asked for an additional contract extension until December, 1992. Instead, he has been told that he will be asked to step down upon Schiller’s anticipated election by the executive board.

In a statement released by the USOC, Helmick said that Pittenger has been asked to remain at the USOC’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., as a senior consultant “through his contract and beyond.”

Pittenger, who is in Moscow for a drug conference, could not be reached for comment.

He was praised Wednesday by Helmick and USOC secretary Chuck Foster, chairman of the 10-member search committee. But it was apparent that the USOC sought an administrator who was more familiar with modern marketing strategies and could make the most of the $249-million quadrennial budget.

Schiller supervised the SEC’s marketing efforts, including corporate sponsorships and television contracts. He also was responsible for sponsorships, advertising and general operations for the 1986 Live Aid Concert at Philadelphia.

He has had a long-term involvement in the Olympic movement. While serving as a professor and head of the chemistry department at the Air Force Academy between 1979 and 1986, he was actively involved in the administration of the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation. In the 1984 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles, he was competition director for boxing. He recently has acted as an adviser to the Atlanta Olympic Committee in its bid for the 1996 Summer Games.

Foster said that Schiller’s credentials made him as attractive a candidate this time as when he was first offered the job two years ago. But Foster said that Schiller still had to satisfy the search committee during an interview Monday at Chicago about his reasons for resigning 21 months ago.

“He told us that this was the job of a lifetime,” Foster said from his home at Duxbury, Mass. “He felt that then and he feels that now. He stepped aside for personal and family reasons. But when our search started, it was apparent that he was one of the candidates.

“In the interim, he’s re-established himself with the U.S. Olympic Committee at large and has general support from the national governing bodies of the sports involved in the movement.”

Schiller said Wednesday from SEC headquarters in Birmingham, Ala., that the obstacles that prevented him from continuing in the job in 1988 have been removed. He said that he is healthy and that his family is happy with the impending move.

“I want to help with the transition to a new commissioner here, but I’m anxious to begin with the USOC as soon as possible,” he said. “This is the job that I wanted, and it’s also the job I wanted before. But, due to circumstances, I wasn’t able to do it then.”

Schiller denied published reports that he had been dissatisfied with the position in 1988.

But he acknowledged that changes since have been made that will make the executive director’s job more manageable.

He credited that in part to recommendations submitted earlier this year by the USOC’s overview commission, which was headed chaired by George Steinbrenner. Schiller contributed to the commission’s report and has been actively promoted for the executive director’s job by Steinbrenner, a USOC vice president.

“If you’re asking whether the organization is different today than it was a year and a half or two years ago, the answer is yes,” Schiller said. “Certain things came out of the overview commission that will improve the working relationship among the membership, the athletes’ groups and the executive director.”

Foster said that he had informed Pittenger of the search committee’s decision by telephone and believes that Pittenger will accept the offer to remain with the USOC as a consultant. Pittenger was interviewed last week by the search committee by telephone before he left for Moscow.

Ross Wales, a Cincinnati attorney who is honorary secretary of the international swimming federation, and Jack Kelly, executive director of the 1986 and 1990 Olympic Festivals, were interviewed Monday at Chicago.

Although Schiller has been considered the leading candidate, Wales said that the search committee was open-minded.

“There’s nothing I could point to that leads me to believe that it was anything but a fair process,” Wales said. “I’m disappointed, but I wish Harvey the best and know that he and I see an awful lot of things from the same vantage point.”