Newest Clemson commit not interested in NIL or fame

Four-star 2025 RB commit Gideon Davidson announced a commitment to Clemson earlier this week.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Fri Jun 16 07:00:17 GMT-04:00 2023

Clemson’s newest running back commit didn’t care about NIL money or how many offers he could accrue before making a decision. He also doesn’t care about making a name for himself on social media. He just wants to be Gid the Kid.

Gideon Davidson is a 2025 4-star out of Lynchburg (VA) Liberty Christian Academy, and he made a verbal commitment to the Tigers during a short ceremony at his school Wednesday. Even the few minutes of attention was more than Davidson wants, according to his head coach.

“Here's the one thing that I think even makes us more unique in today's world, where every high school kid is trying to brand his name and get as many hits as he can on social media. And so, certainly there's going to be a lot of coverage on what we did here a little bit ago, on social media. But, Gideon and the family wanted to keep this very tight from the very beginning," Frank Rocco told TigerNet. "This wasn't like, ‘Oh man, I got 50 offers. Oh, now I have 51 offers. Oh, now I have 52. Look how great I am.’...They wanted to keep this tight from the very beginning. I mean, he's a graduating sophomore. He just finished his sophomore year.

"He's got two more years of high school, and I think he identified very early in the process that, at least Clemson for sure, and one or two other really high level schools were great options for them, and why would I want to continue to consider every other good option that might be 500, 800, a thousand, or 5,000 miles away when I've got all these really good options right here close? So, I really respect the way the family went through the process of keeping it tight.”

Rocco said Davidson was honest with all of the college coaches he contacted.

“There's also a degree in today's world where there's grown men working very hard to develop relationships and recruit too, from all of these colleges over all over the country, and then kids will play them along for three years, well knowing that they're not going to go to that school, but it makes them look better,” he said. “Well, Gideon, from the get go, if there was a school that he just couldn't see himself going to, he was upfront and said, ‘Sir, thank you. I'm honored for you recruiting me, but I just don't see myself going there,’ and quite honestly, I used to coach college football, that used to be the best news, short of actually getting someone to commit to you because then you can cut them and move on, if somebody wasn't stringing you out. So, that's what I think has been so unique about the Davidson experience.”

Rocco said Davidson still has room to grow.

“He is a blossoming flower, is what he is. He has so much ability that is still untapped,” Rocco said. “He started for us as a freshman...We went to the state championship game his freshman year, and we played a team in the beach area of Virginia, which is a very rich, talented football area. The school was named Phoebus High School, and they have been in the state championship and have won many state championships, over the years.

"It's 14 to 14, five or six minutes left in the game, we have the ball and we're on our own 25 or 30, starting to put a drive together and we go and score, we win the state championship...We have a couple other really good football players on our team, but we kept just giving the ball to our freshman running back against a very high-level, talented team in the state championship game with five minutes to go. So, we just kept feeding them the ball, feeding the ball, feeding them the ball, and then sure enough, on the third play of that drive, he pops it, breaks down the sideline, and he outruns speed burners from the other team that had an angle on him and he runs in for a touchdown, and we're all celebrating, jumping up and down.

“We just won the state championship, we thought, and we kind of looked back down the field and a flag came out, late in my opinion, and it brought the play back. But, my point in telling you that, we ended up going on and we ended up losing the game on a pick-six, right at the end. It was in a rainstorm, but in that game, we had good high level high school players on our team, but it was the freshman, the freshman that put us on us back and carried us to what we feel could and would've, should have been a state championship. So, from the very beginning, he was a thoroughbred, and he just keeps getting better.”