Dennis Collins became the first Executive Director of the North Coast Athletic Conference when the league began its first playing season in 1984. In his 23rd year, he continues to lead this NCAA Division III conference, long recognized as one of the most successful conferences in all three divisions of the NCAA. Behind his leadership, the Conference provides quality intercollegiate experiences for more than 5,000 student-athletes annually in 22 championship sports.
At its founding in 1983, the NCAC member presidents sketched out a totally new plan for a collegiate athletic conference: 1) Women’s sports would enjoy equity with men’s; 2) All sports would be treated with equity (no major or minor sports); and 3) Presidents would be involved and lead the conference.
While familiar themes today, these were remarkable, even radical in 1983. Dennis Collins was given the difficult task of making these founding principles a reality.
After its first year, the NCAC was being hailed as a model for other college conferences. In a world where almost all conferences were pulled together for men’s sports only (and generally only for football and men’s basketball) the NCAC was the first NCAA conference established with the principles of equity for women’s and all sports. Weekly news releases for all sports and a combined men’s and women’s basketball media day were just a few of the NCAC initiatives soon imitated by conferences in all three divisions.
Today, the NCAC is one of the leaders in Division III with the full sponsorship of 22 championship sports, and its sponsorship of 11 sports for women is among the most offered by any of the more than 100 conferences in all NCAA divisions. The NCAC provides a strong range of quality services to its membership, from championship administration to officiating services.
In the past 20 years, Collins has guided two membership expansions of the Conference—one in 1988, adding Earlham and Wittenberg, and the most recent, the addition of Hiram and Wabash Colleges in 1998.
Collins is a respected national leader and has served as President of the NCAA Division III Commissioners Association, a group he helped to organize in 1989. From 1992-1996, he served as a member of the NCAA Council, the national association’s equivalent of a board of directors. In the same period, he chaired the NCAA Dist. IV Postgraduate Scholarship Committee, served on the Division Special Restructuring Taskforce and in 1999, completed a six-year term on the NCAA Interpretations Committee. He was awarded the prestigious Meritorious Service Award from the Div. III Commissioners' Association in 2006.
He was a founder of the Intercollegiate Officiating Association, a cooperative amongst 24 NCAA/NAIA colleges which provides regional officiating services. He is now in his 15th year as that group’s chief administrator. Collins has served on Presidential Advisory/Visiting Committees at both Carnegie Mellon University and Bates College. He also served on the Games Committee of five Kickoff & Pigskin Classics, college football's opening games, between 1984 and 2002.
Previous collegiate experience includes a five-year tenure as communications director for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics; sports information director/athletic-alumni director at Case Western Reserve Universtiy and news director/sports information director at Otterbein College. For an eight-year period, he operated his own firm, Collins Communications, which provided public relations and photographic services to regional and national clients such as the National Football League.
He is a graduate of The Ohio State University with an undergraduate degree in journalism and served four years in the U.S. Coast Guard. He and his wife Jeanne have three grown children and reside in Bay Village, Ohio.