KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Bob Frederick, a national leader in college sports during his tenure as Kansas' athletic director, died Friday from injuries sustained in a bicycling accident the previous day.

Frederick, 69, was in the final stages of a long outing when the accident occurred near the intersection of Kasold Drive and Sixth Street in Lawrence.

He flew over the handlebars and struck the pavement. Frederick was taken by helicopter to University of Kansas hospital, where he died around 8 p.m. Friday.

Frederick will be remembered as the athletic boss who gave Roy Williams his first head coaching job, and men's basketball thrived in his tenure during 1987-2001. The Jayhawks won the 1988 national championship with coach Larry Brown and went to two other Final Fours with Frederick as the athletic director.

Brown left for the San Antonio Spurs after that season, and Frederick took the recommendation of North Carolina coach Dean Smith to hire Williams, an unknown Tar Heels assistant.

Williams went on to take the Jayhawks to four Final Fours and became one of the game's greatest coaches.

"As fine a man as could possibly be, that was Bob Frederick," Williams told The Associated Press from his home in North Carolina.

Kansas also won two bowl games with coach Glen Mason, whom Frederick hired.

The 1992-93 school year was perhaps the high point of Frederick's tenure. The football team won the Aloha Bowl, the men's basketball team played in the Final Four and the baseball team appeared in its only College World Series.

Nationally, Frederick was among the most respected administrators in college sports. He served on the NCAA Division I men's basketball committee for six years, the final two as the chairman.

"Bob Frederick was an outstanding collegiate athletics administrator, and more importantly a terrific human being, a loving husband and a great father," Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins said in a statement. "For all of his success, his trademark was his sincere caring for student-athletes and coaches."

Frederick's influence on college basketball was wide-reaching. He was a member of the NCAA Special Television Committee that negotiated a $1.725 billion contract with CBS for the tournament's TV rights.

He championed sportsmanship, and even after departing Kansas continued to chair the NCAA Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct.

"Bob was a class act who led by example, the epitome of good sportsmanship and ethical conduct," Kansas chancellor Bob Hemenway said in a release. "He has been a role model for countless student-athletes and educators and KU is a better place because of him."

Perhaps his most publicized ethical stand came in 1990, when Frederick announced the Jayhawks were dropping a basketball series with Notre Dame because the Fighting Irish had withdrawn from the College Football Association to cut its own network deal with NBC. The move weakened the value of the CFA.

Frederick was a finalist to become the first Big 12 commissioner but lost out in a vote of schools to Southwest Conference commissioner Steve Hatchell.

After stepping down as athletic director in 2001, Frederick remained an active voice in college sports, publishing papers and posting blogs about college sports issues.

Among his most recent blogs for Sports Management Resources one posted in March decried the lack of diversity in hiring practices in college sports leadership positions.

He remained a member of the Kansas faculty and taught classes in sports marketing and law.

Frederick also had been a voter in the Harris Interactive College Football Poll since its inception in 2005.

Frederick, a native of Kirkwood, Mo., first came to Kansas as a student in 1958 when an eye defect changed his plans of entering the Air Force Academy. He had been recruited to the academy by Smith, then an assistant coach who encouraged Frederick to attend Kansas.

Frederick walked on the basketball team and played for two years under coach Dick Harp and served as a graduate assistant over the next two years while completing his masters.

He was an assistant coach under Ted Owens in 1971-72 and later served as an assistant athletic director and was executive director of the Williams Educational Fund before becoming the Jayhawks' athletic boss in 1987.