College Sports Information Directors of America

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Jim Vruggink – Purdue University

CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award

by Tom Schott, Purdue University Senior Director of Strategic Communications

Don Burggraff proved to be more than a ninth grade English teacher for Jim Vruggink. The Hudsonville (Michigan) High School teacher also was a career counselor, providing Vruggink an entree into sports writing that advanced into a communications career spanning more than half a century.
 
“Mr. Burggraff noticed that all my English papers focused on sports, so he asked me to become the sports editor of our student newspaper as a sophomore,” Vruggink says. “I’m not sure if he was recognizing talent or merely desperate to find someone to fill the position. But it led to me getting a job writing about our high school sports in the local weekly newspaper, The Grand Valley Shopper, for $7.50 per week.”
 
That was in 1963, and Vruggink went on to write about, talk about and otherwise promote athletic accomplishments and events until his retirement from Purdue University in August 2019.
 
Vruggink is recipient of a 2020 CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award and will be recognized at CoSIDA’s annual convention, which takes place June 7-10 at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.
 
 
“It truly was a labor of love,” says Vruggink, a member of the CoSIDA Hall of Fame class of 2004 and president of the organization in 1996-97. “Not everyone can say they woke up every morning and couldn’t wait to get to work, but I did. It was because of the people. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of student-athletes, coaches, administrators, colleagues and media members who crisscrossed through my career and impacted me in so many ways.”
 
Vruggink spent the final 37 years of his distinguished career at Purdue, coming to West Lafayette in 1982 as sports information director. He was promoted to athletic public relations director in 1986 and then served as director of special projects beginning in 2001.

Topping his list of accomplishments was working with two-time Heisman Trophy finalist and future NFL legendary quarterback and scholar-athlete Drew Brees. While Brees and head coach Joe Tiller led the Boilermakers to the 2001 Rose Bowl, Vruggink worked tirelessly to promote Brees as the nation’s top quarterback and most outstanding player. Vruggink and Brees (who was inducted into the CoSIDA Academic All-America® Hall of Fame in 2016) maintain a close friendship to this day.
 
Other highlights included coordinating Heisman campaigns for quarterback Jim Everett in 1984 and fullback Mike Alstott in 1995. Vruggink also worked closely with Hall of Fame men’s basketball coach Gene Keady and other Purdue icons like David Boudia, Ryan Kerrigan, Glenn Robinson and Stephanie White.
 
But in spot-on Vruggink fashion, the humble servant cites his “greatest sense of purpose and satisfaction having come from working as a mentor and advisor for hundreds of Purdue students and interns in our offices and in the three different organizations for which I was an advisor – Sigma Chi Fraternity, Purdue Gold Standard and Gimlet Leadership Honorary.
 
“The greatest satisfaction I got is from former students who made comments or sent notes telling me how something I did or said to them impacted their lives or their career pursuits,” Vruggink noted.
 
Before becoming a Boilermaker, Vruggink served as sports information director at Northwestern (1978-82), was assistant SID at Michigan (1974-78) and sports editor of the Ypsilanti Press (1972-74).
 
On Nov. 6, 1976, after No. 1-ranked Michigan lost to Purdue 16-14, Vruggink made national headlines when he was kicked out of the Wolverine locker room by fiery head coach Bo Schembechler.
 
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he thought I was standing outside the coaches’ locker room with a horde of media members before he had a chance to cool down,” Vruggink says. “My mistake was telling the media that Bo had kicked me out. That became their story. But Bo was great about it, telling me a few days later that with a name like mine I needed something like that to boost my career!”
 
The Wolverines went on to play in the Rose Bowl that year, and Michigan teams advanced to the NCAA Final Four in both basketball and hockey and the College World Series in baseball, as well.
 
Meanwhile, Vruggink had the opportunity to do a 1-on-1 interview with president Gerald Ford, a Michigan alum.
 
Two years later, Vruggink moved on to Northwestern. While enduring a 29-game losing streak by the football program, Vruggink met an assistant athletic trainer named Marion Sides, who would become his wife in 1981. The couple raised two daughters, Jaime and Kim, both Purdue graduates,
 
“Marion was most influential in helping me decide to come to Purdue as SID rather than pursue the same position back at Michigan, which was open at the same time,” Vruggink says. “When we got married, Marion, who was born and raised in Kentucky, said she would follow me anywhere in my career but made me promise that it would never be further north than Evanston, Illinois. She pulled out a map and showed me that Ann Arbor, Michigan, was further north than Evanston. Thus, we came to West Lafayette.”
 
Away from college athletics, Vruggink had several international volunteer roles, serving as the press chief for baseball at the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis and as press information manager for baseball at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
 
Vruggink graduated from Central Michigan University in 1970, majoring in journalism while serving as sports editor of CMU Life and as a student assistant SID. He also worked as a stringer for the Mount Pleasant Daily Times News. In 2012, he was inducted into his alma mater’s Journalism Hall of Fame.
 
Even in retirement, Vruggink remains active in sports profile-raising. Specifically, he continues to serve as the first and only executive director of the National Football Foundation’s Joe Tiller Chapter. Since its formation in 2004, the non-profit organization has recognized the accomplishments of student-athletes and coaches throughout Northwest Indiana while promoting Purdue players and coaches for the College Football Hall of Fame and the Indiana Football Hall of Fame.
 
No doubt, Mr. Burggraff would be proud of his student.