A rough week for Georgia Tech assistant athletic director for media relations Dean Buchan got even worse when he returned home Friday night. Buchan, who has managed the athletic department’s media relations office since 2007 and has principally handled media relations for football, had his Cobb County home burgled and lost a number of irreplaceable mementoes earned in a career in college athletics. (If you follow him on Twitter, you may remember Buchan as the one who live-tweeted his 19-hour drive to travel the 12 miles to his home on the afternoon/evening/morning of the January winter storm.)
Thankfully, no one was hurt in the break-in, but he lost a number of keepsakes with considerable sentimental value – Kansas Final Four rings from 1991 and 1993, which he received from then-Jayhawks coach Roy Williams when he worked at the school, a 2006 ACC football championship ring from his tenure at Wake Forest and a 2009 ACC football championship ring from Tech’s title-game win over Clemson.
Also stolen were eight other rings and 12 watches received to commemorate basketball conference championships, NCAA tournaments and bowl trips. There were also seven jerseys, mostly basketball jerseys from Kansas and Wake Forest, and a Kentucky basketball jersey from 1978 (when the Wildcats won the national championship). A prize memento is a rare Kansas jersey from the 1988 national-championship season, when the Jayhawks opened the season wearing yellow uniforms in a road game.
As a side note, the jerseys are an interesting story.
I’m writing this mostly on the chance that someone spots one of these items for sale somewhere and will be spurred to act. Dean is a typically unseen but valuable member of the athletic department and he has the great privilege of dealing with my pestering more than I imagine he would prefer. For that alone, he deserves a break. Hopefully someone out there can help him out. If you happen to see anything, you can e-mail me. My e-mail is in the upper righthand corner of the blog page. Thanks.
