Walking into the Ball State University athletics department, it's difficult to witness the smiles and laughter of administrators happily at work and think the environment was ever viewed negatively in the national scope.
That's precisely the perception Ball State's athletics department held one year ago.
On Sunday, June 24, 2007, men's basketball coach Ronny Thompson was greeted at his office with seven note cards that simply read "liars, cheaters, niggers." On the walls, the perpetrator who broke into the office posted copies of a June 14 article in The Ball State Daily News outlining NCAA violations Thompson's staff had recently been accused of committing during his year-long tenure with the Cardinals.
The incident led to Thompson's abrupt resignation, a $200,000 buyout after the athletics department was classified as a racially hostile working environment and the eventual realignment of how the athletics department conducted its business. In layman's terms, the snowball effect initiated one year ago led to the complete overhaul of the athletics department.
For the past 12 months, the Cardinals' athletics administration has striven to move past the pain generated last summer. Associate athletics director Karin Lee said the administration is using this summer as a springboard for the future of Ball State athletics.
"When we talked about everything that was going on and the transition of the athletics department, we've always said, 'We're starting a new year,'" Lee said. "In any situation with any department that goes through the dark period we went through, it wasn't as easy as snapping your fingers. If you harp on your past, you're going to bring a negative atmosphere to work. Tom put in a plan, and we couldn't get it done in a day. We knew it would probably take a year, and it has."
THE TURMOIL
As hard as he's tried to forget, Peyton Stovall said he remembers the details of that summer day in 2007 well. Like most of his teammates, Stovall, a fifth-year senior captain on last year's squad, was off campus trying to get some rest in the offseason.
"I remember it, but it's hard to keep those memories in my head," Stovall said. "Those weren't the best memories I had at Ball State. I did my best to kind of try to erase those times because it was a tough period. I was just astonished that that may have happened."
Stovall, who became the 24th men's basketball player to score more than 1,000 points during his career at Ball State, was recovering from his second knee injury - a torn ACL - that forced him to miss the entire 2005-06 season. After former coach Tim Buckley was forced from the program, Thompson became Stovall's second coach in as many years.
After going through multiple struggles already, Stovall said he half-expected to see a yellow flag for a late hit out of bounds when he heard the news of the racial notes.
"Here I am," Stovall said, "I'm stressing, I'm getting ready to graduate, my knee's finally starting to feel good, and then I'm hit with more adversity."
Athletics director Tom Collins declared he was committed 100 percent to the men's basketball staff for the weeks to follow. Regardless, Thompson resigned July 12, almost three weeks after the racial notes were found in his office.
For the first time in his collegiate career, Stovall was pushed into a situation where he was the individual teammates looked to for guidance. Until that point, the leader of the pack had been Skip Mills, another 1,000-point scorer at Ball State, who was a year of eligibility ahead of Stovall because of the knee injury.
Despite his own frustrations, Stovall said, he didn't have the luxury of being selfish.
"Dealing with the incoming freshmen, they're not used to that stuff," Stovall said. "It was definitely a good two months that we didn't have a coach, for the second year in a row. When we didn't have a coach again, the structure was just falling apart for us. I knew it was best for us to keep guys together, along with [fellow captain] Anthony Newell. We needed to keep guys together and keep their minds on track."
While Stovall gathered his teammates, Collins tried to fit the pieces back into a broken puzzle. When Collins had announced Thompson as the head coach in early April 2006, the decision was met with much praise from Ball State fans, according to articles in The Ball State Daily News. Collins said the attack Thompson's office and the traces of racism left behind left him deeply offended
"I've had somebody break into my house, and I know how you feel like you're violated," Collins said. "It kind of felt that way, 'How could this happen?' What we want is a safe environment for our coaches and our student athletes where everybody can flourish and be successful."
THE AFTERMATH
Getting Collins to place his focus in the past can often be like pulling teeth. A natural optimist away from his office, Collins, who Stovall described as "a driven guy," is known by his staff for never being satisfied with results if there's something more to be done.
Last summer, there was a lot to be done.
Collins receive plenty of blame and scrutiny in the Muncie community from local fans and media after Thompson bolted Ball State. Numerous editorials were written in The Ball State Daily News criticizing Collins' direction and questioning whether his leadership had generated the hostile racial environment.
Regardless, Collins said he refused to give credence to external pressures, instead remaining committed to moving past the dark cloud generated by the Thompson era.
"I try not to look back too much on that stuff," Collins said. "Really, we were trying to look forward and take care of people. We just wanted to move the thing forward, but it was a difficult time for everybody, not only [in the athletics department] but people on campus, too."
For Stovall, his toughest challenge while with the Cardinals was about to hit him head on.
During his final weeks at Ball State, Thompson had taken the advice of his lawyer and started tape recording conversations he had with the officials in the athletics department, according to an article in USA Today. The most notorious conversations were between him, his assistant coaches and former compliance director Kyle Brennan.
Following a textbook scandal that involved approximately 80 student athletes in 2005 - an incident that landed the Cardinals on two-years probation - Thompson said Collins had implanted a strategy to prove the athletics department had not lost institutional control. The strategy, Thompson said in numerous national articles, was to self-report minor violations to the NCAA in an attempt to show good stewardship for NCAA regulations and the ability to clean up its own small messes.
In May, an anonymous source reported to Brennan that Thompson had been seen at a voluntary workout in the offseason, which is a secondary violation under the NCAA's code. The source said he believed the man he saw at the workout was Thompson because he was a tall, black male with a bald head, according to an article on ncaa.org. Another source said assistant coaches Steve Flint, Troy Collier, William Howze and strength and conditioning coordinator Jason Roberson had attended practices, the second time in less than a year that the same violation had occurred, according to the June 14 article in The Ball State Daily News.
Brennan wanted to report the violations, but Thompson consistently denied the claims that he or his assistant coaches had been to any workouts. Thompson also recorded a conversation in which Brennan, who is no longer with the university, told Thompson he had heard an associate athletics director use racial slurs when referring to black people in general and "those folks downstairs," a reference to the men's basketball coaching staff, according to a story in USA Today. Reports of a racially hostile working environment began flooding the department, through articles in USA Today and ESPN, as well as a column from Michael Wilbon of The Washington Post.
Through all his trying times, Stovall said, he had always leaned on the support of those within the university, the same people who were being labeled as racists.
"That was difficult, really difficult," Stovall said. "I've been here for so long. People in the community and athletics department, President [Jo Ann] Gora, they've almost been too helpful. They've been such a blessing, and I was so thankful for the things they had done for me. Suddenly, those people who were helping me were getting bashed."
With his beloved university labeled as a place that harbors racism, Stovall went on the record numerous times saying Thompson gave racist remarks about white people multiple times in front of his team. Stovall said Thompson had warned him and his teammates not to trust white people because they don't have their best interest at heart.
Stovall said he had no hard feelings for Thompson; he simply felt the need to speak his own opinion on the place he had called home for the previous four years.
"You can disagree with somebody all day," Stovall said. "It's all based on somebody's opinion. Maybe it's not right, maybe it is right. Everything I've been through has been great. I would send my kids here. That's how I've felt about Ball State since I've got here."
The incident had a profound effect on all programs under the direction of the Cardinals' athletics department, not just the basketball team. Immediately after the racial notes became public knowledge, 2007 football captain Cortlan Booker said his coach, Brady Hoke, called a team meeting to address the situation.
"Our coach sat us down and said if there were any racial things found in our program, how quickly that would be dealt with," said Booker, who has been a close friend with Stovall since sharing his high school days in the Lafayette area.
THE MAKEOVER
Collins knew changes were mandatory in his athletics department. However, if step one toward recovery was admitting a problem, step two for Ball State was finding a new men's basketball coach.
In the midst of racial insecurity, Billy Taylor - a black man with a wife and two children - took the reigns of the men's basketball program Aug. 8. Taylor spent the past five seasons at Lehigh University before assuming the head-coaching role for the Cardinals.
"It was essential that coach Taylor was here," Stovall said. "Already doing the things he's done - getting out in the community and getting players with great character - just being a coach because you like coaching, not for recognition, but because you love what you do. It was important for us to see that."
One of the throbbing questions at the time of Taylor's hire was why a black man with a young family was eager to accept a position at a university that had been maligned for racial injustices. Stovall said Taylor's approach to the job and willingness to step in and provide a helping hand to a program in need gave him even more respect for his new coach.
"He came to a situation where this was bad, but all that to him, that was hearsay," Stovall said. "He's the kind of person who doesn't judge the book by the cover. This is what was said - those things that were said were on the cover of the book - but he decided to read the book. Now he's in a situation where he has an opportunity to do some really great things here."
True to Collins' desire to continue improving, the makeover of the athletics department didn't end with Taylor's hire. Along with a racially hostile environment, a lack of communication in the athletics department had also been highly criticized.
To address this issue, Gora and Collins decided in January to realign the structure of the athletics department. Collins, still the athletics director on the large scale, assumed direct responsibility for five sports, while his recently hired associate athletics director Karin Lee was charged to oversee the other 13 athletics programs.
Lee, who was hired as senior women's administrator in August, said changing the landscape of the department has improved communication 10 fold.
"I think, pretty much, the majority of the progress could be attributed to the plan Tom put in place," Lee said. "Tom had a vision and put a plan into place, and then we followed it up with hard work. We work every day to make sure Ball State athletics is the best it can be."
THE FUTURE
When Stovall, who is working as a graduate assistant this summer after serving as an intern a year ago, walks into the athletics department now, he said the environment is as warm and friendly as he always believed it to be. Even though Stovall is playing on the opposite end of the court compared to this winter, he said, he appreciates working with people who love being involved with Ball State athletics.
"I see people smiling when I go into the office," said Stovall, who aspires to be an athletics director in the future. "That's where you have to start off - in your athletics office. Are people inside your own office happy? When I can go in there and joke around, that's fun to me. I think that helps everybody enjoy their working environment."
Despite receiving more responsibilities after the realignment, Lee said, she's as happy at work as she's ever been in her professional life.
"It didn't bother me," she said. "That's what I came here to do. Every time there's steps you take in your career, every path you take is going to be a different path. It's provided me a great challenge, and that's what I like. I don't want to sit behind a desk from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. I love coming to work, and that's something not a lot of people can say."
One of Collins' goals during the past year has been to make the working environment such that his employees share Lee's feelings about their jobs. A major change that has made Collins feel more at home in his office is the chance to work with more people he hired.
"I think any time you build your own team, you've got your own teammates on the team and they all understand what they're doing it's [beneficial]," Collins said. "And I understand that change is hard. I came in here, and there have been some changes that have been difficult for some people. But I think we've got a good team here, we're moving on and we're excited for all the good things that are going to go on here this fall."
The painful memories of a summer ago still linger in Stovall's mind. Those moments headlined the adversity he fought through valiantly enough to be selected as a finalist for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award.
As impressive as his trudge through difficult times was in his five years at Ball State, perhaps most telling about Stovall's character is he said he would go through it again with the same spirit.
"You've got to be thankful for the hard times, too," Stovall said. "My parents always tell me it takes rain and sunshine to grow. [Thompson] made me a stronger man than I would've been. I try to take something from everybody I come in contact with. I believe God places everyone in your life for a reason."
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