The warm weather of Tempe, Ariz., has been replaced by frigid Indiana air. Ball State University's athletic director, Tom Collins, arrived in Muncie for his first visit Wednesday night.
This is the first of three trips Tom Collins will be making to Muncie before he returns for good on Jan. 9. Collins got his first taste of the Ball State experience as he attended Wednesday night's men's basketball game at IUPUI.
"I was impressed with the team," Collins said. "I know they're going through the injury at point guard. You can see some growing pains out there. It was a good test in that small gym under those conditions."
The number one priority for Collins is the stadium renovation. He made a visit to Browning Day, the architectural firm that is handling the project. Collins said the firm is finalizing cost estimates, and he hopes to have input in the final plans.
"I'm excited about that challenge," Collins said. "I've been involved in a number of construction projects at Arizona State University - Sun Devil Stadium in particular. I think it's an exciting time for the university to be putting a new stadium up."
Collins will meet with all of the coaches today before heading back to Tempe.
ATHLETIC ISSUES
With the Cardinals' athletic program still reeling from the textbook policy violations, It will be up to Collins to put athletics on the right track. Controversy is something Collins has experience in handling.
In 1994, the Arizona State basketball program endured a point-shaving scandal involving two players on the team, Stevin Smith and Isaac Burton. The mastermind behind it was Benny Silman, a campus bookie.
It started when Smith racked up a $10,000 gambling debt to Silman. In order to pay it off, Smith agreed to fix four Sun Devil basketball games during the 1993-94 season and received $20,000. Burton received $4,300 and took part in two games. This may not have been found out if it wasn't for Silman letting other bookies in on the betting.
Overall, there were 61 bets which made bettors a grand total of $506,000. It was the odd number of bets placed throughout the nation that tipped off the FBI.
Collins said the NCAA and FBI investigation into the matter took more than three years to complete.
"It was a very long and painful investigation," Collins said. "We didn't have any role in the process until the end of the process. It was a situation where they were trying to figure out who the people were. They kept pulling back the layers. It was a pretty painful process to go through."
NCAA's "Don't Bet On It" program was established right after the incident, and Arizona State was used as the poster child for it. All student-athletes at Arizona State were required to go through an anti-gambling program after the incident.
Silman received a 42-month prison term for his role, and Smith was sentenced to a year in prison.
"It's pretty disappointing to think that you have young men who you gave an opportunity to who took advantage of it," Collins said. "It tarnished the reputation of a good university."
Another incident at Arizona State during Collins' tenure there involved the football program. The Sun Devil Recruiters, predominantly made up of female students, is a program in which ASU students are used to help recruit potential football players for the program. Part of their responsibility is to entice these recruits to come to the school and to give them campus tours. A 2002 article in the ASU State Press revealed that these hosts were supposedly encouraged to get intoxicated with recruits and to pursue sexual intercourse. Collins said it was immediately looked into and resolved.
"That's one of those issues that we went through and made sure that we were very diligent who the people were that were helping out with Sun Devil recruiting, making sure we checked their backgrounds and things like that," Collins said. "When those issues comes up, it just gives you a chance to pause and be able to go back and say, 'Where did we make the mistakes?' We should've thought of those things."
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