Dennis Collins, commissioner of the North Coast Athletic Conference passed away suddenly, Sunday, June 14, from a heart attack.
Collins became the conference's first and only commissioner when the league began its first playing season in 1984. For 25 years, he led one of the most successful conferences in all three divisions of the NCAA.
He was 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 1992-96, 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 27 NCAA/NAIA colleges that provides regional officiating services. Collins served 17 years as that group�s chief administrator. He served on Presidential Advisory/Visiting Committees at both Carnegie Mellon and Bates. He also served on the Games Committee of five Kickoff & Pigskin Classics, college football's opening games, between 1984 and 2002. Over the years, Collins guided two membership expansions of the NCAC -- one in 1988, adding Earlham and Wittenberg, and the most recent, the addition of Hiram and Wabash in 1998.
Prior to coming to the NCAC, Collins served five years as communications director for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He also was sports information director/athletic-alumni director at Case Western Reserve and news director/sports information director at Otterbein. 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 was a graduate of Ohio State with an undergraduate degree in journalism and served four years in the U.S. Coast Guard. He is survived by his wife Jeanne, and three grown children, Jennifer, Kate and Michael, as well as his mother, sister, brother and their families.