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Jon Duncan will be the permanent NCAA enforcement director.
The NCAA made the announcement Monday morning 13 months after Duncan was named as interim director following the firing of Julie Roe Lach in February 2013.
At the time Duncan inherited the mess that was the Miami investigation. That case concluded in October. And while the NCAA has been criticized on other fronts, the enforcement group has gained a lower profile under Duncan.
That in itself should be a positive sign. There had been wholesale defections from the department basically in the wake of Mark Emmert conducting a 2013 investigation into the way a portion of the Miami case was handled.
“As interim vice president of enforcement, Jon led the team through a difficult time," Emmert, the NCAA president, said in a statement, “and the enforcement team and national office as a whole, grew and benefitted from his service."
“We feel it,” Duncan said in January of the defections from enforcement, “We still have a lot of institutional knowledge left."
Duncan has a long-standing relationship with the NCAA having worked for 15 years as outside counsel for the organization. In this wide-ranging interview with CBSSports.com in January Duncan said, “"I honestly don't know [about the future]. I don't know if it's entirely up to me."
Duncan, 43, said the decision to remain permanently had a lot to do with his family that includes two young children and his wife, who had moved to Kansas City. The interim title was due to expire in September.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has been on record for a while calling for an overhaul of the enforcement department.
