The Clemson Dubcast

Joey Batson

Longtime Clemson strength and conditioning coach Joey Batson joins the podcast to share the story of the open-heart surgery he underwent this past summer.

Batson, 60, lost his father to a heart attack in the 1970s when his father was 39 years old.

 

 

Andy Staples, Cole Cubelic and Brett McMurphy

Andy Staples and Cole Cubelic join the podcast to give their takes on the state of Clemson football after the Tigers' 10-3 loss to Georgia last week.

Does Dabo Swinney need to adapt to keep up with the Bulldogs, Alabama and Ohio State? And what of an offensive line that was overwhelmed in the opener? Will Clemson be good enough to get into the College Football Playoff for a seventh consecutive season?

Brett McMurphy visits to chart his visionary course through various mediums over the course of his career -- from newspapers to web sites, to ESPN and now to The Action Network.

McMurphy was the center of one of the most remarkable stories in media history after he was laid off by ESPN. As he continued to collect bi-weekly checks from the network, he got around a non-compete clause by merely posting his scoops on Facebook -- major scoops that ESPN then had to chase.

 

 

 

Mark Bradley

Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution remembers being intimidated at sharing press boxes with the likes of Lewis Grizzard, Furman Bisher, Dave Kindred and numerous other giants of the sportswriting industry.

Bradley gradually developed a style all his own and is known as one of the best of his craft in sports column writing -- especially when facing murderous deadlines.

What was it like to sit next to Grizzard and his old-school typewriter in a press box? What was it like doing a story on the holder for Kevin Butler's 60-yard field goal that beat Clemson in 1984? 

What's it like being told by Hawks coach Mike Fratello that he's done with you, that "you stabbed me in the heart?"

What was it like, seven years ago, hearing that Steve Spurrier waged figurative war on him after Bradley wrote (accurately, as it turned out) that Spurrier might not last much longer at South Carolina?

What's it like dealing with the vast modern-day restrictions on media access that make it much more difficult to develop relationships with the people you cover?

Bradley is a trove of entertaining anecdotes from his decades spent telling the world what he thinks. He also gives his take on what he think will happen in Saturday night's mammoth showdown between Clemson and Georgia.

 

 

 

 

Behind the scenes at Kite Hill Brewing Company

Clemson's first brewery has been a long time coming, and a long time working for the two co-owners who continue to juggle demanding full-time jobs in addition to getting Kite Hill Brewing Company off the ground after opening their doors in early July.

The Clemson Dubcast goes on-site to interview the key players, including master brewer Mike Fuller. An avid Clemson fan and longtime Tigerillustrated.com subscriber, Fuller spent time out west and then the better part of nine years in Asheville. As he worked his way up the brewing ranks, he had a dream to return to Clemson and give the city its first brewery. Last December he answered an ad posted by co-owners Bobby Congdon and Bryon Leggett.

Congdon is the assistant director of Clemson's Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics. He's also married with two children.

"I'm making it work now, working through some annual leave," Congdon said. "And I have a forgiving boss that likes beer. So that helps."

Leggett has a background in chemical engineering and works in business development for a Wisconsin-based contract manufacturer, a job that consumes 50 hours a week by itself. He said he's worked 90 to 100 hours a week the last few months. He's married with a 9-month-old infant at home.

Leggett and Congdon met as students while working for Clemson's student radio station. They both graduated in 1998.

"Our vision is to have a community gathering space with something for everybody," Leggett said. "So it's not just about the beer."

Congdon started home-brewing in 2005 inside an apartment not far from Kite Hill's present location in Patrick Square.

"By the third batch we started talking about how cool it would be to open a brewery in Clemson," Congdon said. "That persisted for years and years, but common sense said 'Don't do that. That's insane.' But about four years ago I sent an e-mail to Bryon. I had been drinking beer, and I got the idea: 'We should actually do this!'"

 

David Paschall and Dayne Young

David Paschall has covered Georgia football for decades at the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. He joins the podcast to reflect on just how much sports media has changed over the years, and the media's own role in a demise that includes dramatically reduced access to the teams and players they cover.

Paschall also gives his take on the mammoth Sept. 4 matchup in Charlotte between Clemson and Georgia. He remembers traveling to Death Valley in 2003 and watching the Bulldogs romp 30-0. A lot has changed since, with the Tigers now one of the supreme beings in college football and Georgia trying to ascend to the perch Clemson has enjoyed.

Dayne Young works for Rivals site UGASports.com and the PR department for Georgia's school of journalism. Young once worked as a TV sports anchor but got out of the business when he realized how few people watch the evening newscasts anymore. He adapted to new ideas and now is a major part of his site's expanded digital presence, which includes regular video podcasts with former Georgia coach Jim Donnan.

Young reacts to the latest wave of attrition that has affected the Bulldogs with Darnell Washington and Tykee Smith having undergone surgery. He has some doubts about JT Daniels' ability to guide Georgia's injury-addled offense to enough points to win the showdown in Charlotte, but he thinks the Bulldogs' defensive front might be the most talented and deepest in the country.

 

 

Jim Barker

Former Clemson University president Jim Barker joins the podcast to share what he's been up to since leaving the high-pressure world of running a university.

Barker had a fascinating window into Dabo Swinney long before many other people thought the coach had what it took to run a successful football program, let alone a perennially dominant one.

Barker still teaches a course at Clemson called "The Architecture of Leadership," and Swinney's name comes up often in the class' conversations about great leaders.

Barker, who was one of the main architects of NCAA reform years ago, acknowledges that those reforms failed and says the system is broken.

Barker was a key figure in the ACC's courting of Notre Dame before the Irish joined the conference as a part-time member. As the ACC and everyone else grapples with the recent seismic development of Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC, Barker said he hopes the ACC is thinking boldly and not conventionally.

"I'm amazed that we don't use these moments in time to open up possibilities that are not just baby steps, but huge steps," he said.

 

The Dude of West Virginia

Christopher Lambert, also known as The Dude of WV on social media, became a phenomenon a decade ago during the last realignment craze in college athletics.

An avid fan of West Virginia who's not in the media business, Lambert caused a stir when he began producing news items from conversations he was having with influential people.

Lambert basically learned some journalism on the fly, realizing that sometimes people were giving him information to advance their own interests and it resulted in some mistakes in his reporting.

Now that realignment is back on the front burner with Texas and Oklahoma headed to the SEC, The Dude is back in action as he tries to develop informed opinion on what will happen next and whether West Virginia will be safe.

For the record, The Dude believes the Mountaineers will end up in a conference they probably should have been a part of all along: The ACC, which is looking to solidify its future in a volatile, cutthroat world of big-time college athletics.

 

Martin Jenkins

Martin Jenkins was a part of a class-action lawsuit that sued the NCAA and led to the recent harsh rebuke of the NCAA's model by two Supreme Court justices.

Jenkins joins the podcast to reflect on what it all means and where college athletics could be headed with athletes now able to profit from their names, images and likenesses and, perhaps in the future, getting an actual cut of the monstrous revenues college football generates.

When Jenkins played at Clemson from 2010 to 2014, NCAA rules limited schools from providing more than one meal per day to athletes. Now players at Clemson and elsewhere eat three meals a day at lavish dining facilities in addition to getting checks for cost of attendance.

For Jenkins, the wheels for joining the lawsuit were set in motion after he wrote the song "We Too Deep" and was told NCAA rules prohibited him from capitalizing on the popularity of it (it has become a staple at Clemson home football games, and the official YouTube video Jenkins created currently has more than 6.5 million views).

Jenkins also reflects on his deep level of love and admiration for Dabo Swinney. The two might have some philosophical differences on the topic of compensating college athletes, but he said it's never gotten in the way of their relationship.

Jenkins, who lives in Atlanta and works in the insurance industry, is a regular at Clemson football games and marvels at how far Swinney has taken a program that hadn't won 10 games in two decades when Jenkins began playing for the Tigers.

 

Brandon Streeter, Tyler Grisham, Robbie Caldwell, Mickey Conn, Todd Bates

Five Clemson assistant coaches sit down for in-depth discussions on their position groups.

Earlier this week, Dabo Swinney opened up his football operations building to the media and allowed his coaches to spend hours mingling with those who cover Clemson on a regular basis.

Streeter is quarterbacks coach for the Tigers. Grisham coaches receivers. Caldwell oversees offensive line, Conn safeties and Bates defensive tackles.

Clemson begins preseason camp on Aug. 6.

 

Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller, 57, has been at The Post and Courier of Charleston for decades. Because of pandemic-related budget cuts, Miller had to move from his love of sports to the business section where he's had to start from scratch in some ways as a reporter.

Miller goes back a long way to the days of Tommy West and Tommy Bowden, and he's full of stories from his time covering Clemson on a full-time basis.

In the summer of 2003 at Bowden's media golf outing, Miller was planning to be in the featured group with the head coach. He was irritated when sports information director Tim Bourret asked him for a huge favor: "Can you play not with Tommy but with our new receivers coach instead?"

That coach was Dabo Swinney.

"I didn't get in five words the entire round," Miller said of getting to know the man who'd be the Tigers' head coach five years later.

Miller reflects on how the changing nature of media access has made it harder for reporters to develop relationships with the people they cover. He also looks back to close, personal relationships he's had with various figures including Bowden, Reggie Herring, Willie Simmons, Monte Lee and others.