While the Ball State University athletic department has been criticized by the media, fans and alumni, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Tom Collins has recently been questioned about his honesty at past jobs.
A fax to the Ball State Daily News in late August and a blog entry posted Tuesday on hoopwise.com both accuse Collins of lying about his education while at Arizona State University.
Since then, the Daily News filed several Freedom of Information Act requests and contacted officials from Ball State, Arizona State, Northern Arizona University, South Mountain Community College, former Arizona State athletic directors and Collins.
The documents and interviews reveal a web of inconsistencies that Collins attempted to explain away or disputed. For example, Arizona State media guides from 1992 to 2000 list Collins as having earned a bachelor's degree in marketing from Arizona State in 1982 while Collins' resum+â-¬s only note that he was a student there. Collins said he doesn't know who wrote his profile in the media guide and he had asked that the information be changed.
A resum+â-¬ from around the year 2000, obtained through an open records request to Arizona State, listed him as a 1994 graduate of Northern Arizona but Collins said Wednesday he graduated from Northern Arizona in 2003. A prior resum+â-¬, believed to be from 1996, also listed him as a Northern Arizona graduate, but failed to list his year of graduation.
Collins said Wednesday that after he received his job as assistant athletic director at Arizona State, he never had to apply for any of his subsequent positions and he had no idea how the university got copies of his resum+â-¬. A human resources manager at Arizona State said "generally people must submit a resum+â-¬ for job progressions."
Collins did not rule out the possibility that someone forged the documents to make him look bad.
His application to Ball State, which listed the 2003 general studies degree along with his other experiences, was professionally vetted by Baker-Parker, Inc., and they confirmed his date of graduation and degree. However, the paper trail and interviews have failed to bring any sense of clarity to what happened prior to his 2005 arrival at Ball State.
"I didn't deceive"
In 1985, Collins received his first administrative position at Arizona State when he took the job of assistant athletic director of operations. The position announcement for that job listed several requirements, including "a bachelor's degree and five years of experience or equivalent combination of education and experience." It noted a master's degree in athletic administration or business administration as a preferred qualification. Collins' resum+â-¬ for that position listed a two-year stint as an assistant ticket manager at Arizona State, nine months as a ticket manager at Washington State University and two years as assistant athletic director of tickets at the University of Miami. It also noted he was a ticket coordinator from 1976 to 1981 and a ticket supervisor for the Fiesta Bowl from 1977 to 1983.
Under education, the document read: "Marketing, September 1976 through December 1982, Arizona State University." It did not indicate a degree earned.
A resum+â-¬ linked to his promotion to associate athletic director of corporate and community affairs in 1996 also lists his education as being from Arizona State from 1976 through 1982 with an emphasis in marketing. It again doesn't note a degree.
Collins said he was hired and promoted under the experience section of the minimum requirements.
Former Arizona State athletic director Kevin White, who had the position from 1996-2000, said Collins never tried to deceive the department.
"I know he was pursuing his degree while I was the athletics director," White said.
Attempts to contact former Arizona State athletic directors Gene Smith, 2000-2005 and Charles Harris, 1985-1996, were unsuccessful.
Subsequent resum+â-¬s, however, list a degree from Northern Arizona. A resum+â-¬ obtained from Arizona State listed Collins as a 1994 graduate of Northern Arizona with a Bachelor of Arts degree in liberal studies. The resum+â-¬ is not dated but does list his position of senior associated athletic director at Arizona State, a position he held from 2000 to 2005.
Collins said he did not recognize the resum+â-¬.
"I'm not disputing it but that's wrong because that's not the year," Collins said.
Another undated resum+â-¬ lists Collins as a graduate from Northern Arizona with a Bachelor of Arts in liberal studies. However, the resum+â-¬ does not list a year of graduation.
The most recent job experience listed on the resum+â-¬ is the position of associate athletic director for corporate and community relations at Arizona State. Collins held the position from 1996 to 2000.
Arizona State men's basketball and football media guides from 1992 to 2000 list Collins a 1982 graduate from Arizona State with a degree in marketing.
"That was 20-some years ago," Collins said. "I don't know what they used to get that information from. It was a mistake in the media guide, I admit that but I don't know who put those things together.
"I told them a couple of times to change it," Collins said. "I don't know who was in charge of doing that."
Mark Brand, the associate athletics director and the head of the Sports Information Department at Arizona State said there is no way to know who wrote the biography since it was written almost 20 years ago and several people worked on each media guide. Brand added that the media guides were generally written from information from resum+â-¬s that the university had obtained.
Collins said he did not imply that he had a degree Arizona State. He also said he did not ever try to deceive Arizona State by listing a degree on his resum+â-¬ that he did not have.
"I didn't deceive Arizona State because my supervisors at the time knew," Collins said.
Just a "glitch"
Collins blamed the inconsistencies regarding his degree on a "glitch" at Northern Arizona regarding transfer credits from Arizona State.
"In 1994, I basically had all my requirements completed," Collins said. "But Northern Arizona because of the glitch in the [Quantitative Business Analysis] 221, didn't grant me my degree.
"I knew I didn't have my degree," Collins said.
Tom Bauer, the assistant director for Office of Public Affairs at Northern Arizona, said the final class Collins needed to fulfill his requirements was transferred from South Mountain Community College.
"Our records indicate that he needed one more class to complete his degree," Bauer said. "And he transferred that to us, and his degree was awarded in 2003."
Collins said he took several classes at community colleges, but the final class to complete his degree came from Arizona State.
"A lot of those [community college credits] were on the ASU transcript," Collins said. "Because a lot of them would have transferred to ASU."
Bauer said the records do not indicate any fault from Northern Arizona in failure to transfer the credit. However, he said, it does not mean that Collins was at fault.
The credits needed did not come from South Mountain Community College, Collins said.
"That's not it," Collins said. "I can tell you that. It's a class that was transferring from ASU. I can get you the exact class. I think it was Quantitative Business Analysis 221."
Collins has not provided evidence that the credits came from Arizona State.
Although Collins said the class from South Mountain Community College was not the class needed to complete his degree, he said he did take a class there.
"The South Mountain Community College, I know that was a computer class," Collins said. "I know exactly what that was."
South Mountain Community College would not release any documents pertaining to Collins without a signed release from him.
Attempts to contact Collins on Wednesday and Thursday to get a release signed were unsuccessful.
BSU resum+â-¬ accurate
Collins said he never had to supply a resum+â-¬ to Arizona State after he was hired the assistant athletic director-operations in 1985. In response to the open records requests, Arizona State provided four resum+â-¬s. Only one of those resum+â-¬s, the one he sent in 1985, was accompanied by a cover letter.
"That's the only job I applied for, the assistant AD for operations," Collins said.
Arizona State did not require Collins to put in a new application for his promotions, he said.
"I don't remember the terms," Collins said. "When I got my promotions there it wasn't, at the time, it wasn't like I had to apply for those things."
Camille Crook, manager of ICA human resources at Arizona State, said that the university's policy has been to have submit resum+â-¬s for promotions. The university also provided copies of position announcements that coincided with each resum+â-¬ it provided to the Daily News.
Collins said he did not supply resum+â-¬s to Arizona State but they could have got them from somewhere else.
"I probably wouldn't have supplied it to them because I was working there," Collins said. "But that doesn't mean somebody wouldn't have been able to pull it off, a secretary or somebody like that. But again, as I did a lot of public speaking for the city of Tempe, for Arizona State and a number of those groups, people would ask for resum+â-¬s to be able to give a little bit of bio information."
His resum+â-¬ was possibly accessible to people at Arizona State, Collins said.
"My resum+â-¬ would have been on a secretarial work area," Collins said. "I just don't know if anybody had access to it back then. I suppose somebody could have."
Collins said he does not remember anyone who had it out for him but he was at Arizona State while other employees were let go.
"Not that I can remember," Collins said. "But obviously when you're in those positions you let people go. I can't recall anybody. I'd have to go back through and think about the timing and who was around at the time. I was there a number of times when some staff got let go and things like that. I can't think of anybody right off the top of my head."
Everything on Collins' resum+â-¬ for the position of director of intercollegiate athletics at Ball State was confirmed before he was hired, he said.Baker-Parker, Inc., which conducted the search for an athletic director for Ball State, confirmed on Nov. 18, 2005 that Collins did not graduate until 2003, according to a document from Ball State.
Ball State President Jo Ann Gora could not be reached for comment.
"I went through Baker-Parker search firm," Collins said. "I had to sign a document that my resum+â-¬ was correct for the job I applied here at Ball State, which I did. They verified everything on my resum+â-¬."
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