Note: The following appears in the Louisiana Tech football gameday program.
In the world of college football, to be an elite team, you have to field a team of elite players. The best way to field an elite team is to recruit at an elite level.
Over the years, Head Coach Dabo Swinney and staff have been relentless on the recruiting trail, not just in the Palmetto State, where the Tigers have seen South Carolina natives, such as DeAndre Hopkins, Shaq Lawson and Andre Ellington, don the orange and white and play in Death Valley, but also nationally.
Clemson legends C.J. Spiller and Sammy Watkins opened up a pipeline of blue-chip talent from the Sunshine State that allowed for Deon Cain and Ray-Ray McCloud to venture up to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Tigers have been on the national scene for quite some time and have had the chance to play in primetime games and give prospects a showcase of what they can achieve in Clemson through the lens of their television sets. Winning six ACC championships in a row, appearing in six College Football Playoffs and winning two national championships since 2015 allows for quite the momentum on the recruiting trail.
Most elite programs in college football cast a wide net in the recruiting process by playing the law of averages in hopes of landing blue-chip talent. Clemson takes a different approach than the other elite programs in the sport. The Tigers are very selective in the recruitment process and try to find not just great football players, but great young men who fit the program’s established culture.
“Obviously, a guy has to be a good player,” said Jordan Sorrells, the architect of Clemson’s recruiting operations. “The good news for us is the pool of those good-enough players is large enough so that we can still find those guys who fit who we are culturally as well.”
“Once we determine that this guy is good enough from a football standpoint, then we are really able to dive into what I would say is the crux of the talent evaluation process, which is who are you as person? Who are you are a student? You recruit a guy, but you also recruit his entire family, so our program wants to have a full understanding of who that guy is.”
To be great in the world of recruiting, coaches have to build and maintain relationships with high school coaches, not just in the state of South Carolina, but the entire country.
“We are really grateful to have Coach (Robbie) Caldwell,” continued Sorrells. “It…