Bill Battle began his collegiate career at the University of Alabama, where he went on to become a three-year starter playing both offense and defense, and he was on Coach Bear Bryant’s first national championship team. In 1963, he entered the coaching profession as a graduate assistant at the University of Oklahoma. While serving a two-year military tour in 1964-65, he was an assistant coach at the United States Military Academy.
In 1966, he moved to the University of Tennessee, where he was an assistant coach for four years. He was named head coach in 1970, and during his seven-year tenure, his teams went 59-22-2, ranked three times in the top 10, twice in the top 20, and won four out of five bowl games. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama and a Master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma. In 1981, Bill founded the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC), and served as president and CEO until 2002, when he turned the day-to-day operations over to his son, Pat.
He also has served as chairman of the board of Licensing Partners International (LPI), which was created in 2001 to represent licensing interests of non-collegiate sports properties, as well as corporate and entertainment properties. Both CLC and LPI were acquired by IMG in 2007.
Bill was named to the University of Alabama All-Decade Team of the 1960s and was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1981. He became the first member inducted into the National Collegiate Licensing Association Hall of Fame in 2000, and received the 2005 Paul W. Bryant Alumni Athletic Award at the University of Alabama.
In 2008, he was inducted into the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of a National Football Foundation award in 2008 for his outstanding contributions to amateur football. In 2010, he was selected as one of the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators two-member Hall of Fame class. Bill was named the athletic director at his alma mater, the University of Alabama, in 2013.