Indianapolis ? The NCAA hired Indiana University president Myles Brand as its president and chief executive Thursday, ending a seven-month search for a new leader.

Brand will assume his new duties Jan. 1 and his contract will run through 2007.

Brand, 60, has been president at the university in Bloomington since 1994 and was the man who oversaw Bob Knight’s firing as the school’s basketball coach in September 2000.

The decision was unanimous, said Robert Lawless, chairman of the NCAA Executive Committee and president of the University of Tulsa.

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway was on the committee that selected Brand.