FootballScoop is proud to announce that Dave Feeley (Duke) is the 2023 FootballScoop Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners.
The first game set the tone for Duke’s 2023 season, a renaissance campaign in which the Blue Devils served notice to the college football world on Labor Day weekend.
Battling perennial ACC power and preseason top-10 Clemson, the Blue Devils scratched to a 7-6 deficit at the half.
The Tigers never scored again; the Blue Devils never let up.
In so doing, they scored a resounding 28-7 upset-win – the first of four-straight victories to open their season.
More importantly, Duke served notice in that game against Clemson that this iteration of Blue Devils had more substance, more strength, more toughness than perhaps some in the past.
Duke would go on to win eight games, actually used a second-half comeback to take a late lead against top-10 Notre Dame before falling by a single score, and closed its campaign with a postseason win in the Birmingham Bowl.
But foundation for that campaign wasn’t distilled in that opening win against Clemson; it had been laid in the grueling months before as the program worked under noted strength and conditioning coach Dave Feeley.
It’s that backdrop that has Feeley honored as FootballScoop’s 2023 Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year as presented by AstroTurf and voted on by previous winners of the award.
“Dave is so great at what he does,” Mike Elko, Duke’s head coach the previous two seasons and now the leader at Texas A&M, told FootballScoop. “He had an enormous role in creating the culture that was Duke football while we were there.
“He instilled the grit in them. He pushes the players to their limits, and they love him for it. He’s really unique; very deserving of this award.”
At Elko’s behest, Feeley had instilled a “boxer’s mentality” into the Duke football program. Blue Devils? Yes. Blue bloods? Nah. These guys were brawlers; pugilists.
A team might beat Duke, but it did not escape unscathed; moreover, the Blue Devils led or were tied in the second half of 12 of their 13 games last season.
New Blue Devils head coach Manny Diaz, the former Miami head man hired away from his role as Penn State defensive coordinator to replace the departed Elko, has leaned into keeping Feeley in Durham, North Carolina. Feeley could have rejoined Elko in College Station, Texas, to run Texas A&M’s strength program, but Feeley honored a commitment to his family.
“I’m ecstatic that Dave decided to stay at Duke,” Diaz told FootballScoop. “Our players believe he is integral to their success. They believe in him and trust his plans for them.
“Having worked with him several years now, I can tell you he’s a great man, great father, great teacher and a great leader.”
A native of Brick, N.J., Feeley was a four-year letterman and a team captain at Plymouth State. He GA'd at UNLV, then landed an assistant strength job at FIU in 2008. In 2011 Feeley took over his own strength program for the first time, working at Ball State through 2015. Following a one-year stop at South Carolina, Feeley ran the strength program at Temple and Miami before coming to Duke.
Feeley edged out additional finalists Torre Becton from Texas and Ben Herbert from Michigan for the honor, in ballots cast by previous winners of the award and what unfolded the all-time closest vote for the FootballScoop Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year honor. Prior winners selected this year's winner.
Previous winners of the Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year award are Don Sommer (TCU, 2008), Joey Batson (Clemson, 2009), Kevin Yoxall (Auburn, 2010), Shannon Turley (Stanford, 2011), Kaz Kazadi (Baylor, 2012), Pat Ivey (Missouri, 2013), Zac Woodfin (UAB, 2014), Ken Mannie (Michigan State, 2015), Tim Socha (Washington, 2016), Zach Duval (UCF, 2017), Lew Caralla (Buffalo, 2018), Tommy Moffitt (LSU, 2019), Chad Scott (Coastal Carolina, 2020), Scott Sinclair (Georgia, 2021) and Kurt Hester (Tulane, 2022).
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