NCAA president Myles Brand announced Saturday that he has pancreatic cancer and the outlook is "not good", according to the Associated Press. NCAA vice president Wally Renfro said that Brand would remain in charge with no change in duties.

“I am currently undergoing chemotherapy, and I am receiving excellent care,” Brand, 66, said in a statement. “I will know in the next several months the success of this treatment.”

Though former Mississippi State coach Ron Polk famously crusaded against Brand for years over the NCAA’s relationship with baseball, American Baseball Coaches Association executive director Dave Keilitz has long maintained that Brand is a great ally for the sport. There is some momentum on the Board of Directors to reduce baseball’s games from 56 to 52 or 50, but Brand has assured coaches he will fight to ensure they keep 56 games. Brand further showed his support to the coaches by appearing and speaking at a coaches summit in Indianapolis in November.

"I thought his talk was the most significant thing of the whole event," Keilitz said in November. "What the coaches heard and saw was, ‘Wow, we’ve got somebody here at the very top that cares for us and supports us.’ That’s the message he conveyed, and I think the coaches felt very, very good about that."