By Will Vandervort.
There was one guy at Littlejohn Coliseum Tuesday night that won regardless of the outcome.
As you know, longtime Clemson Sports Information Director Tim Bourret broadcasted his 1,000th men’s basketball game at Clemson last night and what a great game it was for him to call. His alma mater, Notre Dame, which ranks 10th nationally, just escaped their first trip to Littlejohn with a 60-58 victory over Clemson, the only place he has worked in his 36 years in the profession.
It was a game that came down to the last shot – a three-pointer by Demarcus Harrison that bounced off the side of the rim has time expired. But despite the heartbreaking loss for the school he has given his life to, it did not feel like a loss when friends and colleagues gathered in what used to be the old media room at Littlejohn Coliseum.
So many former student-workers in the sports information office came back and celebrated what was a victory for Clemson and all of college athletics. For 36 years, we have all been blessed to have worked with one of the best sports information directors this country has seen.
No one in his chosen profession is more respected and revered than Tim Bourret. He has won countless local, regional and national honors. There is not a sportswriter who has covered the Tigers or just a Clemson sporting event that will tell you they didn’t feel respected or treated well when they came to Clemson.
Tim always makes sure that he and his staff go out of their way to make you feel welcome and to make sure you have all you need to do your job.
I grew up listening to Tim on the Clemson Sports Radio Network. From the time I was 10 years old until I took a job covering the Tigers in 2004, I listened to Tim and “The Voice of the Tigers” Jim Phillips call the games.
I always loved it when Tim threw out random statistics during the broadcast or would let me know something about the student-athlete I did not know. I could always here his passion about the game and about whom he was talking about in his voice.
I’m so old-schooled, I remember when Tim did color for the football games, especially in the late 1980s when he teamed up with Phillips and former Clemson quarterback Mike Eppley for a short time. I thought those were the best broadcast because you had Jim’s great voice, accompanied by Eppley’s knowledge of the game and then Tim’s uncanny way of finding a statistic or story that fit the moment they were talking about.
During road football games, most of the time, I get positioned by or close to Tim in the press box. It is my favorite place to sit because Tim will throw out statistics—or Bourretisms as we call them—during the game. Not only are they helpful for my job, but I eat them up. I love statistics. Like Tim, I feel like the statistics can tell a different kind of story at times.
But more importantly, I feel like I’m that 12- or 13-year old boy again who is listening to one of his idols fill him up with Clemson sports knowledge.
Once I took the job to be the sports editor at the Seneca (Daily) Journal in 2004, the first person I went and introduced myself to was Tim Bourret. I did not do it because it was my job or anything like that. No, I wanted to meet the guy I grew up listening to on the radio. I wanted to meet the guy who played a huge role in why I became a sportswriter in the first place.
I have never told Tim this story because in my business you want to try and be as professional and as un-bias about the team or school you are covering as possible.
But today I feel like it is worth sharing this story. I do not care about those other things because I want to congratulate the guy I grew up idolizing. Tim may not have been a superstar athlete or anything like that, but to me he was better.
He gave a kid like me, one that discovered in high school that the NBA was not in his future, that I could still work and make a living doing what I love to do.
I was thrilled to be invited last night and to see Tim being honored by so many people that love him. I was thrilled to see that in an arena where one side has to win and one side has to lose that there was one guy who was winning the whole time.
And I guess because of Tim, all of us that have listened and worked beside him in these 1,000 games, we are winners, too.