“Tom was a brilliant administrator and diplomat,” Bill Hancock, a former N.C.A.A. official who is now executive director of the College Football Playoff, said in a phone interview. “He had a great ability to say no, without cramming his decision down your throat.”

Mr. Jernstedt also worked with the local committees that hosted the Final Four, which consists of the semifinals and the championship game; helped create the policies governing the selection and seeding of the teams in the tournament; and was the lead staff member during negotiations with television networks that generated millions, and then billions, of dollars from CBS.

“He understood our business exceptionally well, especially for someone who hadn’t been in television,” Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports, said by phone. One weekend during the tournament, he said, a glitch at its broadcast center in Manhattan caused the network to lose the technical ability to air commercials that were worth more than $1 million.

“I told Tom, ‘It’s our fault we lost the commercials, can we add them the next weekend?’” Mr. Pilson recalled. “He said, ‘Go ahead, but don’t do it again.’ Some people we deal with might have said, ‘No, you’re out of luck,’ but Tom said, ‘Just get it done.’”

Mr. Jernstedt became known as the “father of the Final Four,” but he was not working alone. He worked closely with top N.C.A.A. leaders like Walter Byers; David Cawood, another N.C.A.A. executive; and the organization’s powerful men’s basketball committee. The committee’s rotating membership meant that Mr. Jernstedt had the organization’s deepest institutional knowledge.

Source: New York Times

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