Chad Ford

Chad Ford
Born	Kansas City, Missouri
Alma mater	Brigham Young University - Hawaii (B.A.) George Mason University (M.S.) Georgetown University (J.D)
Occupation	Teacher, consultan, mediator

Chad Ford is an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University – Hawaii (BYUH). He is Director of the University's McKay Center and is known for his study of conflict resolution with an emphasis on large group ethnic and religious conflict, as well as for his sports journalism with ESPN.

Early life

Ford was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1971. He holds a B.A. in history at Brigham Young University (1995), an M.S. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University (2000), and concurrently earned a J.D. in International Law from Georgetown University and then served as a researcher for the United Nations in Northern Ireland.

Career

Before joining the faculty of Brigham Young University in 2005, Ford co-founded sportsTALK.com with Jason Peery in 1996 which was sold to ESPN in 2001 and was renamed Insider. Ford still contributes to the subscription's content. He’s known for his "insider information" and breaking news on NBA stories, especially regarding the draft, trade rumors, and international basketball. By 2005, more than 1 million paying Insider subscribers read his daily reports for ESPN.

As a mediator and facilitator, Ford works for several projects around the world, including in the Middle East with PeacePlayers International. Additionally, he served as the Managing Director of Global Peacebuilding (2007), teaches at BYUH while directing the university’s McKay Center. The center functions as a cross-cultural peacebuilding laboratory for the education of students, faculty, staff and community members. The theoretical and practical tools learned in the center enable the sponsorship of community building, cultural leadership opportunities and projects throughout the world. Ford has traveled extensively, having lived in Connecticut, Missouri, North Carolina, California, Hawaii and Washington D.C., and having covered the NBA in Asia, Europe, and Africa. He also did research for the United Nations in Northern Ireland.

Controversy

In 2015 Ford was accused of retroactively editing his NBA Draft rankings after seeing how players performed in the league. A poster on Reddit's /r/NBA forum discovered the edits by comparing the web caches of Ford's draft boards shortly after the draft and what the draft boards looked like in January 2015. Ford's draft rankings from 2009 through 2013 all had edits made to them at various times in 2012-2013. Among the changes were bumping James Harden from #6 to #3 on the 2009 board, Damian Lillard from #8 to #4 on the 2012 board, and Giannis Antetokounmpo from #17 to #9 in 2013. A total of 45 players had their rankings modified. A day after the allegations surfaced, Ford denied any involvement in the edits and ESPN said that it believed Ford based on his past professionalism. In the same statement ESPN noted that it was unclear if the person responsible for the edits would ever be ascertained.

External links

• Chad Ford on ESPN.com (subscription required to read his columns)
• Chad Ford on Twitter
• BYUH faculty page