Longtime Clemson football staffer Joey Batson announces retirement plan
A longtime Clemson football employee is retiring after next season.
Joey Batson, the Tigers’ director of football strength and conditioning, intends to retire after the 2025 season, a team spokesman confirmed to The State on Thursday.
Batson is entering his 29th year in that role with Clemson and informed the team of his decision last week. TigerIllustrated was the first to report the news.
The 2025 season will be Batson’s 40th overall at the college level, with 36 of those seasons as a head strength and conditioning coach.
Batson’s annual salary is $625,000, per his most recent contract. Larry Williams of TigerIllustrated reported that the leading candidate to succeed Batson is Dennis Love, Clemson’s current assistant strength and conditioning coach.
TigerIllustrated also reported that Batson, who is in his mid-60s, approached Clemson coach Dabo Swinney about the idea of him stepping away after the 2025 season. Batson underwent open heart surgery in 2021 when he was 60 years old and had to get medical attention after Clemson’s ACC championship win last December, per the Rivals-affilliated website.
Batson lost his own father to a heart attack when his dad was just 39 years old. He’s beloved at Clemson for his fiery personality, which includes him bellowing, “They don’t put championship rings on smooth hands!” during the video Clemson plays before the start of the fourth quarter of each home game at Memorial Stadium.
But he’s grappled with how to maintain that level of intensity while also prioritizing his own health, he said in a podcast appearance shortly after his surgery.
“You just want to keep pushing,” Batson said on the Clemson Dubcast in 2021. “But then you’re having to pull yourself back, saying: ‘I don’t know if that’s very smart.’ ”
Batson is a South Carolina native and 1986 Newberry College graduate who worked as a graduate assistant at Clemson from 1985-88 before returning to the school as its lead strength and conditioning coach in 1997, when Tommy West was the coach.
Batson will end up having worked under West, Tommy Bowden and Swinney for the entirety of Clemson’s all-time winningest coach’s tenure. Heading into this season, Batson has coached 76 All-Americans, 58 strength and conditioning All-Americans, 114 NFL Draft picks and 23 NFL first-round picks.
He’s also been part of nine ACC championship teams, seven College Football Playoff teams and two national championship teams at Clemson (2016 and 2018).
In 2009, Batson was named a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach by the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association (CSCCA). That’s considered the highest honor one can be given in Batson’s profession.
Love, reportedly the top candidate to replace Batson, is entering his 15th season across two stints with Clemson in 2025. He’s also a South Carolina native and worked at Clemson from 2004-14 before returning to the program in 2022.
Both of Batson’s sons played football at Clemson and his younger son, Ben, is currently on the Tigers’ staff as a strength and conditioning assistant.
Recent criticism of Clemson’s strength and conditioning
Batson is undoubtedly a hall-of-famer and a trendsetter in his industry, and his hands are all over the Tigers’ run of ACC and CFP success over the last decade.
In recent years, though, Clemson, Swinney and Batson have faced some pushback regarding the effectiveness of the Tigers’ strength and conditioning program.
Linebacker Barrett Carter caused a stir in September 2023 when, after then-No. 9 Clemson lost its season opener at Duke, Carter said during a press conference he didn’t feel like he was in “game shape” and needed to get in “better shape.”
That admission from a star player after Clemson lost by 21 points against an unranked opponent and looked equal, if not a little outmatched, in terms of athleticism prompted some concern and criticism from the fan base.
Swinney said at the time he agreed with Carter and emphasized there’s a difference between being well-conditioned heading into a season and actual “game shape.”
“You can be in the best shape on the planet, but until you play the game for an extended period of time ... it’s different,” Swinney said in September 2023.
During that news conference, Swinney was also directly asked if he was still confident in the effectiveness of Clemson’s strength and conditioning program.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said.
There was also criticism of Clemson’s strength and conditioning program as the Tigers struggled mightily against the run during the 2024 season. Clemson allowed five separate teams to rush for 200-plus yards, was 85th nationally in rushing defense and allowed its most yards per carry in a season (4.71) since 1975.
Those struggles were among the reasons that Swinney fired third-year defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin this offseason and replaced him with Tom Allen, the former Penn State defensive coordinator and Indiana head coach.
This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 11:55 AM.
