RICK BAGBY

Rick Bagby is entering his 8th year as the Director of Athletic Video Services. Bagby oversees the daily operations of a department that services the entire Clemson Athletic Department.

Growing up in Lexington, NC, Bagby started working with video as a ninth grader at Lexington Senior High School. That year he shot coaches’ video for the football and basketball teams. As his experience grew shooting high school sports so did his love for video. He accepted a volunteer position with the North Carolina football team while just a senior in high school.

Bagby’s volunteer position turned into a paid student videographer job with the football team when he was accepted into school at the University of North Carolina in the fall of 1991. While at UNC he took every advantage of the best video equipment on campus to teach himself how to shoot and edit videotape. The more he taught himself the more opportunities there were to shoot different sports at North Carolina. Soon he was tasked not only with shooting daily football practice, but he was helping the women’s basketball team install and run their first ever editing system, shooting highlights of all 26 sports UNC offered plus assisting with the production of several highlight tapes.

After graduating in 1995 with a B.A. in Physical Education, Bagby took a job with Granville Towers in Chapel Hill as the South Tower Manager and Summer Camps Manager. Being out of the daily sports video routine only ensured him more that this was the field he really wished to pursue. So in July of 1996 Bagby returned to the North Carolina football department as a Video Assistant. Working with the Offensive coaching staff he oversaw the weekly breakdown of opponent’s game video and the North Carolina self-scout video. With the home computer still a relative expensive and rare piece of equipment, Bagby was able to teach himself about databases in order to provide the North Carolina coaches with extensive reporting on tendencies within it’s own offense. This was the first such report any of the coaches had ever received.

While taking care of the daily video editing needs for the Offensive staff, he also was still responsible for shooting daily football practice plus game day coaches’ angle sideline video. But, with the departure of Bagby’s former boss from his student years, the North Carolina athletic department had no one to shoot and produce its annual All Sports videotape. Bagby accepted this responsibility as well, ensuring that all 26 sports UNC offered were videotaped and included in that year’s tape.

Bagby left North Carolina in March of 1997 to accept the job of Assistant Video Director at the University of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin athletic department offered a much larger video department with more equipment and a better opportunity to become the head of his own department someday. That day arrived much sooner than he expected when just three months later Bagby was named the first ever Video Coordinator for the University of Louisville football department.

Being the first ever coordinator proved to be a challenge from the start. Ordering new equipment and moving existing equipment into a larger area were first time challenges for Bagby. But as he had done as a student several years earlier, he taught himself how to do a variety of jobs. With only the help of two veteran students, Bagby was normally a one-man show during his tenure at Louisville. But his time there was well worth the effort. For in May of 1998 Bagby was named the Director of Video Services at Clemson.

Bagby’s time at Clemson as been spent upgrading and improving the services of the video department. Taking the department into the digital age has been one of his largest tasks. But the department’s structure is ever evolving.

To keep up with changing technology and to feed the thirst he has had for video knowledge since his high school days, Bagby is actively involved in two different professional organizations – Information, Display and Entertainment Association (IDEA) and Collegiate Sports Video Association (CSVA). Bagby has served as the Vice-President of CSVA for one year and is currently winding up his second year as President of this organization.

Bagby takes the task of being the Director of Video Services very seriously. This effort was rewarded by his peers in the Atlantic Coast Conference when he was voted as the ACC Video Coordinator of the Year in 1999 – an award he greatly contributes to a hard working staff including his lone assistant Henry Guess.

Bagby is an avid golfer and active member of the Clemson United Methodist Church in his spare time. He is married to his college girlfriend, the former Jennifer Robinson. The two do not presently have any children.