Wake Forest Athletics News
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100% Cotten
Sept. 25, 2003 by Stan Cotten In the early hours of Tuesday morning September 9th, Jim Phillips slipped away from us. A voice that Clemson fans had come to love and anticipate was gone. So suddenly. It's a hurt that will last for a long time. The void he leaves will never totally be filled. Jim Phillips began his radio career as the "Voice of the Tigers" in 1968. He was still doing his thing just hours before he died - hosting a weekly radio show with Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden. Two days prior he called his 401st Clemson football game on the radio - a Clemson win over Furman. I remember the last time Jim and I were together. It was during the ACC baseball series this past spring between Clemson and Wake Forest in Winston-Salem. Jim was Jim. He had a smile on his face - punctuated by that Letterman-like gap in his teeth - jeans on his hips and a joke on the tip of his tongue. Maybe even more than his voice, which had a distinguishable raspy, southern tilt despite his Youngstown, Ohio, upbringing, I'll remember his smile. Even when Jim was mad he could smile through it. We could all learn from that. And how supportive and helpful he was to me - the new kid on the block - when I got to Wake Forest for the 1996 football season. That was my first season with the Deacs. It was near the end of his third decade with the Tigers. Following Jim's death on Friday of that week I drove down with Duke radio announcer Bob Harris and Brian Morrison of the ACC office to attend the funeral at a small country church about 45 minutes from Clemson where Jim had attended worship services regularly for several years. Not surprisingly, the church couldn't hold all of those who wished to pay their respects. Georgia Tech radio voice Wes Durham was there - along with former South Carolina play-by-play men Charlie MacAlexander and Bob Fulton. Tommy Bowden was there as were former Clemson football coaching legend Danny Ford and former Tiger basketball coach Larry Shyatt. Fulton was a Jim Phillips contemporary . Although Fulton retired at South Carolina going on eight years ago after 43 years as "Voice of the Gamecocks," he knew we had lost one of the "old guys." Fulton recalled that in his and Phillips' heyday, when games were seldom televised, the radio announcer made the game come alive to those listening by transistor radio. Few did it better than Jim Phillips. Through Jim's descriptions of Tiger football, men's and women's basketball and baseball, he had become - a Tiger. And he loved it. I once asked him several years ago if he were ready to retire. "What would I do?" he laughed. What would they do? That might be a better question. What will Clemson fans do? They'll hurt for a while - like all of us. But they'll hurt worse and longer. Because Jim was one of them. And he was one of us - the dean of announcers in the ACC. For some of us younger ones, Jim Phillips was the kind of guy that made us want to do what he did. He touched people's lives - made their Saturdays even more special. He was as popular as any South Carolina governor, but Jim Phillips was blue-collar. A man of the people. The Voice of the Tigers. And we will miss him. |