No Limits Emilio Collins

No Limits

As Executive Vice President of Global Marketing Partnerships for the NBA, Emilio Collins helps corporate partners worldwide with marketing campaigns that both promote their business and the league. It’s a job he loves. But on a personal level, Collins’ true sports passion lies not with basketball, but with wrestling.

“Wrestling is a sport that teaches you incredible discipline, dedication, commitment and focus,” says Collins, a former high school wrestling state champion in New York and a two-time NCAA All-American at 190 pounds at Michigan State. It also offers powerful lessons about overcoming adversity, something Collins says he has used to build a set of principles that has guided him through life. “When you succeed in wrestling, there’s no limit to what you can do in life.”

Starting Out

Growing up about an hour outside New York City, Collins started out his athletic life as a soccer player. He calls soccer his “first love,” and says he didn’t start wrestling until a summer camp before seventh grade. Quickly, his affection shifted.

“I just loved wrestling,” Collins recalls. “I did it in seventh and eighth grade, and then going into high school I decided to go full-time and I stopped playing soccer.”

But Collins also had a lot of catching up to do when it came to his mat work. As a freshman, he says he wrestled in 25 matches and won just five times. That’s the point at which someone with a weaker will might decide that they’re just not cut out for that sport. For Collins, it only cemented his desire.

“It was a tough start, but the thing about wresting that drove me was that every time you lose, you just want to overcome it,” Collins says. “Every time you win, it’s that much more rewarding, knowing you are doing it all on your own as an individual sport. The handful of wins I had gave me enough of a drive to make me go to camps and practice year-round.”

By his sophomore year, he had a winning record. By junior year, he took third place in the state. And as a senior, he won a state title–beating the opponent who had knocked him out the previous year. In doing so, he caught the eye of coaches at Michigan State, who recruited him to wrestle in East Lansing.

Tom Minkel took over as head coach in 1991 after Collins’ first year with the Spartans. He quickly realized he had a young wrestler with tremendous potential.

“He was rough around the edges,” recalls Minkel, who is still Michigan State’s head coach. “He had and still has a very strong personality and is very committed to doing well in whatever he’s into. But he had all the elements to be an outstanding wrestler.”

Collins’ college career arc was similar to high school. Though he ultimately fell short of winning an NCAA championship, Collins rose through the ranks to eventually place fourth in the nation in 1994, and then third in 1995 as a senior.

Foundation for Success

If wrestling gave him the foundation to work hard, Collins’ overall experience at Michigan State also launched him on his eventual career path.

“Being an athlete at a Big Ten university, it really opened my eyes,” Collins says. “That’s when I started to really learn about the sports industry.”

He went straight from Michigan State to Ohio University to attend a graduate program in sports marketing. That helped him hone his focus on working in sports events. And though his first job came as the event coordinator at, of all things, a hot air balloon festival, he didn’t let his inauspicious start dampen his spirits.

“Everyone has to start somewhere,” Collins says with a laugh, noting that the event gave him some great experience working with budgets, vendors, and sponsors.

Collins worked at various sports agencies after graduate school before settling in with the NBA in 2001. He’s been there ever since, continuing to take on new, more important roles, progressing to his current Executive Vice President role.

His former coach isn’t surprised to learn that Collins has achieved so much success because, like many wrestlers, he possesses a tremendous work ethic. But Minkel does add that he was a little surprised his former wrestler wound up working in the NBA.

“There might not be a worse basketball player in the entire wrestling community,” Minkel says, laughing. “Around Christmas, to mix things up, we used to play some basketball. Most of us aren’t very good, but he was an exceptionally poor basketball player.”

Fortunately for all involved, Collins is only asked to deal with marketing partnerships for the league—not trying to guard LeBron James.

“It’s been fascinating,” Collins says of his time with the league. “It’s just a tremendous organization, and it’s been fun to grow with it. … Starting with David Stern and all he did to grow the league around the world, and now to work under [Commissioner] Adam Silver’s leadership has been really incredible.”

The same goes for Collins, who was hailed by Silver for his work during the recent NBA lockout, when Collins helped the league retain crucial partnerships during a difficult time. Since then, Collins has overseen tremendous revenue growth in the league, overseeing a global department that counts a number of blue-chip brands as its partners, including Samsung, Coca-Cola, Kia and Nike.[note: was not done by my department]

Full Circle

Collins is now back in New York, living in Brooklyn with his wife, Kate, and two daughters Naiyah (9) and Zadie (4). A busy family and professional life, in addition to volunteer work, leaves little time for wrestling these days. But sometimes Collins says he still gets the itch.

“I’ve considered if I want to make a return to the mat at some point at age 42,” he says, half-joking “USA Wrestling has a veterans division, and I know there’s a national tournament. I have managed to stay in decent shape over the years.”

Even if he never gets back on the mat, wrestling will always be with Collins. He says he still supports Michigan State’s program—he and Minkel reconnected recently after a chance meeting at a poker room in Las Vegas—and that he loves “giving back to the sport” whenever he can.

Sometimes wrestling even manages to find him in his everyday life, in the NBA offices or working with clients all across the world.

“There are a lot of ex-wrestlers who have been very successful in business,” Collins says,“and it’s always enjoyable to come across them and talk about the good old days.”