he and the doctor "kissed each others’ sisters," a football term meaning the game ended in a tie. In the episodes "Bikini Wax" and "Trojan Horse", he mentions he is in the Ohio State Alpha Chi Delta fraternity, class of 1989. At the end of the episode "Red Cell", he begins to tell a story about his fraternity days before Gibbs interrupts him. In the episode "Child's Play", he mentions receiving a combined score of 950 on his SATs. He has worked in three different police departments—Peoria, Philadelphia, and Baltimore—staying in each location for an average of two years. At the end of his stint with Baltimore's homicide division, he was hired by NCIS in 2001 as stated in season 1, episode 4. This event occurred prior to the NCIS pilot, and the circumstances of his hiring are unexplained, but Tony once jokingly claimed that it was because he "smiled". It is later revealed in the season eight episode "Baltimore" that Tony left Baltimore PD after discovering that his partner, Danny Price, was a dirty cop. During his tenure as a NCIS special agent, Tony has operated as a supervisory special agent and undertaken a long-term undercover operation throughout season four. In season two, he nearly dies from a bout with the pneumonic plague after a woman sends a letter filled with genetically altered Yersinia pestis to NCIS for revenge for what she believed to be neglect of a cold case. Tony ably leads the team in Gibbs's absence when the latter retires to Mexico after recovering from a coma. When Gibbs returns to lead the team, Tony declines an offer to lead his own team and resumes his former position to support Gibbs, who is suffering from the aftereffects of the coma, and continue working with the team he considers family. At the end of season five, Tony is assigned as Special Agent Afloat to the USS Ronald Reagan and later to the USS Seahawk. However, at the beginning of season six, he is reassigned to his original team at NCIS headquarters in Washington, D.C. During season eight he meets E.J. Barrett, who took the post as team leader in Spain that he had previously rejected. In the season 8 finale, Clayton Jarvis, the new Secretary of the Navy, tells Director Vance that he wants to include DiNozzo in NCIS's black operations program after the death of Lt. Jonas