NCAA Will Name Dempsey as Director : College sports: Arizona athletic director picked to replace Schultz as head of governing body.

Cedric Dempsey, athletic director at the University of Arizona since 1982, is expected to be named executive director of the NCAA today.

A Pacific 10 Conference source confirmed published reports Thursday saying that Dempsey had been chosen for the job by the NCAA Executive Committee.

The only remaining step in the selection process, according to reports in USA Today and the Washington Post, was the endorsement of Dempsey by key members of the influential NCAA Presidents Commission. Such an endorsement is considered a formality.

Jim Marchiony, NCAA director of communications, declined comment on the matter Thursday.

A new executive director is scheduled to be introduced today at a news conference at the NCAA’s Overland Park, Kan., headquarters.

Dempsey will replace Dick Schultz, who has held the NCAA’s top administrative post since 1987.

Schultz announced his resignation in May after the NCAA released a report contradicting his claim that he was unaware of improper loans to student-athletes at the University of Virginia. Schultz had served as athletic director at Virginia from 1981 to 1987.

Dempsey was one of four finalists selected by the NCAA’s executive director search committee. The others were Judy Sweet, athletic director at UC San Diego and a former president of the NCAA; William Cobey, former athletic director at the University of North Carolina, and Gerald Turner, University of Mississippi chancellor.

Turner, a former chairman of the Presidents Commission, was considered the front-runner until he announced Monday that he was withdrawing from consideration.

National leadership will be nothing new for Dempsey, 61. He currently serves as the NCAA’s secretary-treasurer and previously served as chairman of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee, one of the organization’s most visible committee positions.

Under his direction, the Arizona athletic program has become one of the most stable in the nation.

One of Dempsey’s first coaching hires, Lute Olson, has made the Wildcat basketball program a national power. Arizona football teams have appeared in bowl games five times in the last eight years. And three other Arizona programs--baseball, women’s softball and men’s golf--have won national titles since 1986.

The Arizona athletic department has shown a budget surplus every year since 1985.

“Ced has the ability to bring together widely divergent viewpoints,” said Butch Henry, Arizona’s assistant athletic director for media relations. “He’s a consensus-builder.”

If there is a blemish on Dempsey’s record, it is his time at Houston, where he was athletic director from 1979 to 1982.

The NCAA put the Houston football program on three years’ probation in 1988. Some of the most serious infractions, including a scheme in which coaches distributed cash payments to players based on their performances, were found to have occurred during Dempsey’s tenure at the school.

Although Dempsey was not implicated, the Committee on Infractions’ report said that the university had failed to control its football coaches because the “athletic department structure did not appear to have full responsibility for the . . . football program.”

Dan Beebe, a former NCAA enforcement director who supervised the Houston case, said Thursday he believes no athletic director could have dealt with the Houston situation because the coach at the time, Bill Yeoman, had direct access to members of the school’s Board of Regents.

In 1986, Dempsey was stricken with a form of cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and underwent chemotherapy. He was treated again two years later but, according to Henry, has not had a recurrence of the disease.