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NCAA will furlough its entire staff amid financial difficulties from the coronavirus pandemic - Nick Bromberg, Yahoo Sports - September 2, 2020

While executives at the NCAA will not be furloughed, the NCAA had previously announced that its upper-level management would be taking pay cuts because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Associated Press obtained the memo, which notes that each furlough will be a minimum of three weeks.

The NCAA lost over $1 billion in revenue when it canceled the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in March amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The money made from the tournaments is by far the biggest revenue-generator for itself and its member schools. Smaller schools without football teams in large conferences with attractive television deals are especially reliant on their payouts from the NCAA tournament to finance their athletic departments.

The NCAA was set to pay out over $600 million to schools at the end of the 2019-20 fiscal year. That payment went down to $225 million because of the pandemic’s impacts. Athletic departments across the country have instituted salary cuts, furloughs and even layoffs because of the pandemic.

Reports by the Washington Post and USA Today in April noted how the NCAA was far more prepared to handle a canceled set of basketball tournaments five years ago than it was in 2020. The reports detailed how the NCAA once had a cash reserve on hand of $500 million but spent much of that reserve in aid to schools to cover cost-of-attendance stipends for players and in a class-action settlement regarding the NCAA’s outdated amateurism rules.

'Father of the Final Four' Tom Jernestedt dies at 75 - Associated Press/Yahoo! – September 7, 2020

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Tom Jernstedt, a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame for his contributions to college basketball and the NCAA Tournament, has died. He was 75. Nicknamed ''Father of the Final Four'', Jernstedt has widely been credited with transforming the NCAA Tournament into the billion-dollar March Madness it has become today.

''A decade after his departure from the NCAA, Tom Jernstedt's fingertips remain visible during March Madness and the Final Four,'' NCAA senior vice president Dan Gavitt said in a statement. ''His innovation and superb ability to develop relationships turned a basketball tournament into a three-week phenomenon that became a global event.''

Jernstedt helped push the growth of the NCAA Tournament from 25 teams to the 68-team, anything-can-happen bonanza held every spring.

Jernstedt helped the NCAA increase its television contract from just over $1 million to more than $10 billion when he left in 2011. He served as president of USA Basketball, was a member of the College Football Selection committee and was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame as a contributor in 2017.