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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Trevor Lawrence was already a national commodity when he visited Clemson after his freshman year in high school, with the expectation that a face-to-face meeting with Dabo Swinney would result in the latest addition to a rapidly growing pile of scholarship offers from programs across the Football Bowl Subdivision. He would leave disappointed.
It worked out in the end: Lawrence would land an offer as a sophomore, eventually sign with Clemson and put together a remarkable debut season as the Tigers marched to the national championship. At the time, however, Lawrence fell victim to a unique quirk for a program with Clemson’s level of prestige among prospective studentathletes – Swinney and the Tigers shy away from issuing immediate, no-questions-asked scholarships to the top recruits in any given year, even one with Lawrence’s obvious gifts.
“That’s my personal philosophy. I want our offers to mean something,” Swinney said. “I just like to have more information. I want to see guys grow and mature, drive a car, have a girlfriend, go the prom. Is it too much to ask to play two years of varsity football?”
At a time when recruiting has reached a fever pitch, with a buzzing drumbeat of attention around top
prospects throughout their high school careers, and as many programs extend offers earlier and earlier to hundreds of potential student-athletes across an individual recruiting class, Swinney’s program has opted for a largely different approach.
The Tigers’ relative pickiness hasn’t impacted the program’s growth into a powerhouse. Clemson for the first time in school history sits atop the preseason Amway Coaches Poll, released on Thursday, one spot ahead of Alabama. The Crimson Tide had been ranked No. 1 in the preseason in each of the past three years.
The overwhelming majority of offers are extended to juniors and seniors, with Lawrence among a small handful of notable exceptions. Another is former quarterback Deshaun Watson, whom Clemson offered even earlier, as a rising sophomore, but only after he’d already made multiple visits to campus throughout his teenage years to create a strong bond with Swinney and the Tigers assistant coaches.
The program is judicious in handing out offers, with less than 100 extended in this current recruiting cycle, and will often take a full calendar year or more before feeling comfortable with extending a scholarship. And every scholarship is meaningful; the coaching staff will accept the verbal commitment of any prospect with an offer, Swinney said. Every offer is “committable,” in recruiting terms.
In comparison, 14 Power Five programs issued at least 300 scholarship offers during the 2019 recruiting cycle; Alabama, the Tigers’ annual rival for the national championship, made 287 offers. Clemson’s “hit rate” for the 2019 class – the rate of commitments to total offers extended – was 17.9%, seventh among all Power Five teams and first among programs centered in the Southeast.
“It’s definitely something that you notice in your recruiting process,” said Alpharetta, Georgia, offensive guard Paul Tchio, a four-star commitment in the Tigers’ current recruiting class. “All these other schools are just throwing out offers to everyone, but Clemson, they were really taking their time in recruiting me. They were really evaluating.”
Yet the laborious process can backfire. Even the most interested prospects must make a choice between accepting an in-hand offer from another program or waiting for Clemson – waiting for an offer that might never come. The subtle slow playing of elite recruits with a multitude of other options can put Clemson’s assistant coaches “in a bind,” Swinney admitted, but he accepts responsibility. “I’m the bad guy,” he said. “And I don’t mind being the bad guy.”
In the case of Damascus, Maryland, defensive lineman Bryan Bresee, rated the nation’s No. 2 overall recruit by 247Sports.com, it took three visits to earn a scholarship, the last coming this past spring. “I was probably being a little bit too cocky” in expecting an immediate offer, he said. For Tchio, it took a year of dialogue with offensive line coach Robbie Caldwell, who told Tchio to “stay patient,” before Clemson delivered an offer.
“It was frustrating at times during the process,” Tchio said. “There were times where I felt they didn’t want me or whatever. But once they offered me and showed me what they had to offer, I knew this was the school for me.”
But being patient has yielded a series of productive late-in-the-game steals for Clemson. One is All-American running back Travis Etienne, who was completely off the Tigers’ radar until November of his senior year in high school. On the heels of a rash of departures in the defensive backfield after the 2015 season, Clemson reeled in three future starters in Isaiah Simmons, K’Von Wallace and Trayvon Mullen during the weeks heading into national signing day. The threesome combined for 20 tackles in the Tigers’ 44-16 win against Alabama in the College Football Playoff championship game, with Mullen the game’s defensive MVP.
“Sometimes that rubs people wrong and we lose out on guys, and that’s fine,” said Swinney. “I’ll go get the seniors.”
The genesis of Clemson’s recruiting success under Swinney stems in large part from the 2006 recruitment of running back C.J. Spiller, a five-star prospect out of Lake Butler, Florida, who chose the Tigers over offers from Southern California, Alabama, Florida and Florida State. Coming on the heels of more than a decade of national irrelevance, the Tigers’ surprise recruiting victory convinced Swinney, then an assistant under Tommy Bowden, that Clemson could succeed with the region’s top recruits regardless of the competition.
Spiller was the first example of what Swinney calls an “inside-out” style in recruiting, meaning the staff doesn’t necessarily devote resources to chasing prospects outside of the program’s natural backyard of South and North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. As recently as the 2015 class, for example, all but two of Clemson’s 24 commitments hailed from this foursome. Even as the staff routinely reaches out to each year’s top prospects regardless of location to gauge initial interest, this traditional geographic footprint has been and will remain the program’s starting point.
The Tigers have throughout Swinney’s tenure been a notable power in trawling through one of the nation’s most fertile talent beds, but never quite as dominant as across the past four recruiting cycles: Clemson has signed one five-star prospect from each of the four states during this span, including Lawrence out of Georgia in 2018.
While this approach has yielded a series of impressive signing classes – not to mention enough talent to stand alongside Alabama atop the FBS – it’s with the 2020 group that Clemson has seen its brand begin to go national.
The Tigers are seeing the interest shown toward top prospects outside of its four-state bubble “reciprocated a lot more,” Swinney said. “It just happened. As our brand grew, people started calling us. We’ll go anywhere for the right fit, the right guy.”
Not coincidentally, Clemson’s recruiting has entered a different stratosphere. With 18 verbal commitments in this current class, five of the five-star variety, the Tigers occupy the top spot in the team rankings compiled by 247Sports.com, one spot ahead of Alabama. If that lead holds, Clemson would join Georgia in 2018 as the only teams to unseat Alabama from atop 247Sports’ final recruiting rankings since 2011.
The poster child for this expanded reach is St. John’s Bosco (California) quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, a five-star prospect who gave his verbal commitment to Clemson in May.
Much like Lawrence before him, Uiagalelei was collecting scholarships from several national powers as of the spring of 2018 but hadn’t been in communication with Clemson; then a sophomore with half a season of starting experience under his belt, he wasn’t on the Tigers’ board at the position. At the time, his coach, Jason Negro, asked Uiagalelei to name the one school that could swoop in with an offer and alter the equation of his recruitment. The answer was simple: Clemson.
Speaking with Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables about a linebacker recruit, Negro mentioned Uiagalelei and asked if the Tigers recruit nationally at quarterback. If he’s good enough, Venables replied, and Swinney will have to see him throw.
Negro shared Uiagalelei’s tape with Venables, who passed it along to Clemson quarterbacks coach and recruiting coordinator Brandon Streeter.
“Ten minutes later,” Negro said, Streeter called and made a promise: I’m going to get to know you – and Uiagalelei – really well.
“Clemson kind of burst onto the scene with Deshaun Watson, without question,” Negro said. “It was just starting to build this whole national momentum with Clemson and the College Football Playoff. (Uiagalelei) is a kid that thrives on competition and wants to be part of the best, and that’s why he picked Clemson.”
After not signing a prospect from California since 1991, the Tigers are set to enroll a pair across the past two recruiting cycles in Uiagalelei and current true freshman wide receiver Joe Ngata. Likewise from Texas: Clemson had signed just one prospect from this talent-rich state since 2003 before landing a verbal commitment in this year’s class from four-star safety RJ Mickens, one of the top prospects at his position.
“We’re not just getting everybody in the South,” Tchio said. “We’re going nationwide.”
Of course, it’s not a coincidence that Clemson’s increased recruiting reach is mirrored by the program’s development into a national power, with two of the past three championships and four consecutive appearances in the College Football Playoff. Top recruits naturally gravitate toward top programs; Clemson’s success has made the Tigers trendy.
“I think that’s why we’re getting some of these commitments,” Bresee said. “It’s like the old Alabama, ‘Alabama wins games, so I’m going to visit Alabama.’
“Now it’s, ‘Clemson wins games; I’m going to go visit.’ It’s cool to make a visit. That’s what’s really giving it the national attention right now.”
The 2020 class represents a parade of factors in Clemson’s favor. There’s the program’s recent national championships. The Tigers’ development into a program capable of recruiting from coast to coast even as they remain primarily focused in the Southeast. The reciprocated level of interest from prospective student-athletes outside of that geographic border.
And in Bresee, Uiagalelei and others, Clemson has identified a perfect storm of elite talents drawn not only to the Tigers’ winning environment but the program’s recruiting approach – a slower, getting-to-know-you style meant to determine the best fit on both sides.
“The guys that I’ve hosted on recruiting visits, they’re just obviously different,” said senior offensive lineman John Simpson. “They know what they want. And if they don’t want a family environment, then they don’t come to Clemson. But if they do, they usually end up coming.”
“It just happened. As our brand grew, people started calling us. We’ll go anywhere for the right fit, the right guy.” Dabo Swinney Clemson football coach on the fact that the Tigers are seeing the interest shown toward top prospects outside of its four-state bubble “reciprocated a lot more.”