NACMA Announces 2015 Hall of Fame Inductees

CLEVELAND, June 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA) announced that current Michigan State University Director of Athletics Mark Hollis, and IMG College Chairman & President Ben Sutton were inducted into the Association's Hall of Fame at the 2015 NACMA Convention.  The Convention took place from June 14-17 at the World Center Marriott Resort in Orlando, Fla.

"On behalf of the Officers and Board of Directors, I am proud to recognize Mark Hollis and Ben Sutton as our 2015 inductees to the NACMA Hall of Fame," stated NACMA President Eric Nichols, associate athletics director/chief marketing officer at South Carolina.  "Both of these men helped to raise the bar and set a new standard in our industry, leading the way for today's marketing professionals in athletics departments across the country."

Hollis was named athletics director at Michigan State on Jan. 1, 2008. He originally got his start at MSU as a men's basketball team manager. Hollis has more than 25 years of athletics administration experience, either at the school or conference level. His well-rounded background has led to his knowledge of all areas within an athletics department, including marketing, financial administration, television negotiations, fund-raising, game operations, facility management, personnel policy, corporate interaction, sports management and public relations.

Hollis is credited with developing some of college athletics' most innovative events. It was his vision that led to Michigan State playing North Carolina in November 2011 in the first basketball game to be played on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. In 2003, Hollis was the architect of the "BasketBowl," which established a then-world record crowd of 78,129 who witnessed the Michigan State-Kentucky game at Detroit's Ford Field. The concept, which involves placing the court in the center of a football stadium, has been used at the last six NCAA Final Fours. In 2001, Hollis helped mastermind the Michigan State-Michigan outdoor hockey game that attracted a then-world record crowd of 74,554 in Spartan Stadium.

Sutton is Chairman & President of IMG College, a division of IMG. He oversees the day-to-day operations and development of the IMG College enterprise, the largest collegiate sports marketing company in the nation. Prior to IMG, Sutton founded ISP Sports in April 1992 and grew the business from its first partner in Wake Forest to more than 60 NCAA colleges and conferences. With this dramatic growth, ISP became the nation's leader in collegiate sports marketing and Sutton's innovations in cultivating and growing the value of collegiate sports multi-media assets became commonplace in the industry.

In the summer of 2010, Sutton helped lead the acquisition of ISP Sports by IMG Worldwide. The merger combined the nation's largest collegiate sports marketing company in ISP, with a strong stable of collegiate brands in IMG's existing college division to form not only the largest collegiate sports marketing company in America, but one of the biggest companies in all of sports business.

About NACMA: NACMA is the first organization of its kind to provide educational and networking opportunities; enhancement of acceptable operating standards and ethics; and establishment of the overall prestige and understanding of the profession of athletics marketing administrators. For more information about NACMA, please visit www.nacma.com. NACMA is administered by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), which is in its 50^th year. For more information on NACDA and the 12 professional associations that fall under its umbrella, please visit www.nacda.com.

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SOURCE Ben Sutton