CLEMSON RECRUITING

What teams offer the most recruits, and where does Clemson stand?
Dabo Swinney gets to know each player who receives an offer.

What teams offer the most recruits, and where does Clemson stand?


by - Senior Writer -

As it turns out, a Clemson offer does mean more.

I was doing some research for the morning recruiting story, and it's interesting to see how rival schools approach recruiting (and how success allows you to modify your approach).

In going through the list of Clemson offers, the Tigers have handed out 70 offers for the 2021 recruiting class. Clemson has offered just seven wide receivers for the 2021 recruiting cycle and will take three of them. In contrast, as I pointed out this morning, South Carolina offered 40 according to 247Sports. Clemson has offered 70 players total across all positions.

At defensive end, Clemson has offered just six, and South Carolina has offered 25. This is in no way a knock on South Carolina at all - that is how they have to recruit right now. Clemson, because of its success, can pick and choose. South Carolina has offered 233 prospects in this class, which isn’t even close to some of the big numbers in the 2021 class, but more on that later.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart doesn’t mind taking to the airwaves to complain about how other programs recruit against him. It hasn’t hurt him at all – his lack of a championship speaks more to his gameday approach than recruiting – because his team is always near the top of the recruiting rankings.

Georgia has offered 202 prospects this cycle and will once again reel in a top class. Alabama has offered 188. Ohio State has offered just 157. Again, all of those teams are just in the average range when it comes to sending out offers. Stanford has offered just 50.

As an aside, it’s interesting to note that when it comes to commitments, the pandemic certainly hasn’t hurt recruiting. On May 25th a year ago, there 376 commitments across college football. On May 25th of this year, there were 854.

And then there’s Tennessee, where head Jeremy Pruitt sends out an offer to anyone with a pulse. Tennessee has 448 offers this cycle, sent out 491 for 2020, and 447 for 2019. The Volunteers are up 244-0 on Clemson for the 2022 recruiting cycle, and 62-1 for 2023. The Vols have offered a whopping 51 defensive ends for this cycle.

The small number of offers speaks to Clemson’s recruiting success. The Tigers pick prospects that fit the Clemson culture and then go from there. They want to get to know the prospect, his mom and his dad and brothers and sisters and grandparents, and that is easier to do when you have a smaller pool to choose from.

That’s the family feeling that prospects get when they arrive on campus.

It also speaks to the fact that the Clemson coaching staff doesn’t hand out offers based on stars or what the recruiting sites think. An offer goes out only after a player has been evaluated and deemed worthy. Case in point – quarterback Bubba Chandler, the former Georgia baseball commit that Brandon Streeter thought would be a good fit in the offense and offered. That was based on film study. Next thing you know, other schools take notice of Chandler and the offers and conversations start to increase.

That’s why Clemson is successful.

A final note as it pertains to 2020 - Southern Miss offered 98 defensive linemen in the 2020 cycle and handed out 587 offers overall. Tennessee was second with their 491, followed by Louisville (446), Nebraska (442), Air Force (439), Toledo (425), and Kentucky (412).

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