CLEMSON RECRUITING

Dabo Swinney sees 'great recruiting class' coming together after summer officials
Stephiylan Green was among the highly-prized commits this summer.

Dabo Swinney sees 'great recruiting class' coming together after summer officials


by - Senior Writer -

CLEMSON – The decision to bring in recruits for an official visit in early June has paid dividends for head coach Dabo Swinney and the Clemson coaches.

The Tigers brought in 31 players on officials during the first weekend in June, a dramatic change from a previous policy of only allowing unofficial visits and saving official visits for the fall. The change worked as Clemson picked up a double-digit haul of commits from the weekend visitors alone plus more, giving the Tigers one of the top-ranked recruiting classes in the country.

“Well, we did one visit. You can do visits all of April, all of May, and all of June. The only change we made is we made the Elite Retreat (a past Clemson recruiting event) into just an official,” Swinney said. “And the only reason we did that is because all the kids had already been here. So, we didn't bring anybody in here. Well, I take that back. We brought 31 kids in. We only brought one guy in here who hadn't been to Clemson.

“Thirty of those guys have been here multiple times, been here games, have been to camps, they've been to junior days, they've been to spring practice and been here many times. The one kid that we brought in that have not been here, we knew what the result is going to be and we knew why he hadn't been here yet. But that was kind of our deal. We weren't going to bring anybody in that had not been here. But a lot of these guys wanted to go ahead and make a decision.”

Swinney said getting players back on campus – a change from two years of COVID – has proven to be a boon for recruiting.

“If you go back to COVID, nobody could get out to campus. That was the big difference. We went a long while where nobody could come in,” Swinney said. “All of this class have had multiple opportunities to come. So that was a little change. And again, you can do visits all of April and all of May and all of June, but we've just chosen not to do that. And we've really taken the same approach. We really hadn't change anything. We've taken the same approach and continue to promote the things that make Clemson Clemson and find the kids that fit and value the same things that we offer here.”

He then acknowledged that the weekend turned out to be better than expected.

“That weekend was awesome for us. And really by September 1, we're going to be about where we have been going back the last eight years,” Swinney said. “We're exactly where we've always been from a class percentage. Some classes are bigger than others, but the percentage of guys of your class that are coming already committed, so I don't see any difference there. But our approach has been the same, and we got a great recruiting class that's coming together.”

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