Sammy Watkins was a Clemson football legend. Could he soon become a Clemson football coach?
Watkins, who starred with the Tigers from 2011-14 and is still the program’s all-time leading receiver, has not explicitly retired from the NFL. But the 30-year-old wideout has not appeared in a game since January 2023 and said last week he “might be done” with professional football. And once Watkins formally hangs up his cleats, getting back into the sport as a coach “could be my calling,” he said April 26 during a wide-ranging radio interview on Clemson flagship radio station 105.5 FM The Roar. Speaking with host Mickey Plyler, Watkins, who was named to the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame earlier this month, said he’s starting to think hard about life after football and strongly intimated he’d be interested in returning to the Tigers as a coach. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney — with whom Watkins said he has a “great relationship” — often brings on former players as student assistant coaches while they finish up their undergraduate degrees through the Tiger Trust program, which Watkins said he’s interested in doing. Watkins and his family will be on campus the first weekend of November to be inducted into the Clemson Athletic Hall of Fame along with eight other former athletes (including his former quarterback, Tajh Boyd) the same weekend the Tigers football team hosts Virginia Tech. “And we might come back maybe a week prior to that and just show (my kids) the campus because I’ve been trying to influence my wife to allow me to come back and finish school and do a little coaching,” Watkins said, laughing. “But she’s kind of scared of that. Doesn’t want me to get locked in with it.” Watkins later told Plyler that he’s also weighing possible careers in mentorship, motivational speaking and media.
He wants to return to Clemson and graduate so he could potentially “do all those great things” and open up more career opportunities with a college degree in hand. “And that’s why I need everybody who’s listening on this radio to reach out to my wife and try to convince her to let me be one of the best coaches in college football,” Watkins said jokingly, adding that he thinks coaching “could be my calling. I have to make a decision, within a year or two, of what Sammy Watkins’ next 20 years or 10 years or five years or 30 years are gonna look like.” “Rest assured, I don’t want to sit home all day and rot. I don’t want to sit home all day and be a stay-at-home dad. I think my purpose is bigger than that. … I’ve definitely gotta be in the world helping people out, and that’s kind of what I’m driving toward.
