RECRUITING WRAP UP (photo: WR Bryce McNeal)

THE HIGHEST STAR RATED CLASS EVER- Coach Swinney mentioned that despite the low number of recruits signed, Sports Information Director Tim Bouret told him that this is the highest average star rating of any recruting class Clemson has ever had. It is not, however, anywhere near the highest ranked class in polls by scouting services or ESPN. Rivals ranked Clemson's recruiting class as 37th best in the nation, Scout ranked it 42nd and ESPN ranked it 19th.

HOWEVER, STAR RATINGS DON'T MATTER- Coach Swinney also mentioned that the rankings are over-rated and an inexact science. He said that the true test is four years later. I agree that they're somewhat over-rated and an inexact science but I do not believe it takes four years to determine whether a player was productive or effective. In other words, the coaches can see a hit or a miss way before the end of a player's senior year. Some recruits will play below the coaches', and for that matter, fans' expectations, while others will far exceed them. Some players hit the ground running as true freshmen and make an immediate impact, whereas others take longer to develop.

HITS & MISSES- The overall class ranking really means far less than the individual player rankings because the overall ranking counts players signed in the class who may be academically ineligible. If the player never steps foot on campus and never plays a down, then why would their individual star ranking even be considered cumulatively in the overall ranking of the class? As far as individual rankings, here are a few examples of hits and misses by recruiting services (either Rivals or Scout) in Clemson's classes over the past few years:

HIT: C.J. Spiller was rated as a five star recruit in the 2006 class. Care to disagree with that one? I think not. If there was a six star rating, C.J. may have lived up to that as well.
MISS: Kavell Conner was rated as a two star recruit in the 2005 class but last season as a Jr. , started all 13 games, led the tigers in tackles with 125, including six for loss and also had a sack.

HIT: Phillip Merling was rated as a four star recruit in the 2005 class, left after his Jr. season and was the first player selected in the 2nd round of the '08 NFL Draft.
MISS: Aaron Kelly was rated as a two star recruit in the 2004 class, yet went on to become Clemson's all-time leader in reception TD's and the ACC's all time reception leader.
HIT: DeAndre' McDaniel was rated as a four star recruit in the 2007 class and has become one of the Tigers' biggest play-makers on defense in just two years.
MISS: Gaines Adams was rated as a two star recruit in the 2002 class, yet tied the school record for career sacks and was the 4th player selected in the '07 NFL draft.

CURRENT RECRUIT AS RECRUITER- Coach Swinney remarked about how our current players are a big part of the recruiting process and can have a huge impact on new recruits. You hear many recruits talk about how current players made them feel welcome on campus when they visited and how the Clemson team felt like a family. If a recruit senses that camraderie while on campus and believes they can fit in, it goes a long way in getting that player to commit. In the case of Tajh Boyd, he may have even been recruited by a fellow recruit, WR Bryce McNeal. Several reports have indicated that McNeal and Boyd may have struck up a friendship at the All American game in San Antonio this year and postulated that it was one more reason for Boyd to come to Clemson.

A DIFFICULT YEAR FOR RECRUITING- Coach Swinney alluded to how difficult of a year it was in recruiting after the disarray that the program was in mid-season. Coach Bowden was out and although Swinney was named interim coach, there was no guarantee who the permanent coach would be since Clemson was interviewing several candidates. Combined with the debacle at the Georgia Dome and losses against MD and WF early on in the season, other programs had plenty of ammunition to use against our prospects, whether they were verbally committed or not. We did in fact "lose" a few recruits but Coach Swinney gave kudos to all the ones who hung in there with us through all of the turbulent times.

JEFF SCOTT IS NEW RECRUITING COORDINATOR- Jeff Scott will now hold the title of Recruiting Coordinator in addition to being Wide Receivers Coach. Billy Napier previously held the Recruiting Coordinator title but will now focus more on his duties as the newly promoted Offensive Coordinator. Scott played for the Tigers from '99-'02. In 2003, he became a graduate assistant, working with the defense. In 2006, he became the head football coach at Blythewood High School (SC), whom he led to the state championship in his first year. He was then hired as Wide Receivers Coach at Presbyterian in 2007 and then returned to Clemson.

RECRUITING CLASS: CRITICAL NEEDS BY POSITION

On National Signing Day, after the Tigers had received all 12 Letters of Intent from recruits by a little after 2 p.m., head football coach Dabo Swinney held a press conference to discuss the class. One of the most interesting things that he brought up was that he and the staff were focused on filling the critical needs: "We were very, very calculated in what we have done the past five to six weeks. The focus was really on quality, really trying to sign top notch kids, great players that fit Clemson and trying to do that while filling a critical need at each position where they felt like we had that. We felt like we did that."

Coach Swinney mentioned several positions that were specified as being a critical need: DE; Safety; depth at LB; RB; WR and QB . Let's take a quick look at each of these positions and where things stand:

DE- Swinney felt it was important to get a couple of end guys because both Ricky Sapp and Kevin Alexander are seniors this year. Malliciah Goodman is a very highly rated recruit that Dabo described as having a high motor and being a phenomenal young man. It's exciting to think about how well Bowers is developing and having both of these guys on the field together next year could spell big trouble for opposing offenses. New signee Darrell Smith is a DE that also played TE in high school. Returning players are Andre' Branch, a RS sophomore, senior Jeremy Campbell and junior Kourtnei Brown. All three have playing experience and will provide some depth.

SAFETY- Replacing Michael Hamlin will be hard to do but Andre' McDaniel has experience at the CAT safety position and will move back there to try and fill those big shoes. McDaniel is one of the best players the Tigers have on defense and I hope that he continues to play well at this "new" position. Chris Clemmons is gone and Sadat Chambers will therefore almost certainly be the starting free safety. RS freshmen Spencer Adams, Rashard Hall and Carlton Lewis will also compete for playing time. New signee Jonathan Meeks is also a free safety and probably has the best shot at playing as a true freshman along with J.K. Jay and Malliciah Goodman.

LB- All three LB's signed in this class are highly rated, especially Corico Hawkins. Hawkins and Spencer Shuey play inside and Quandon Christian is an outside LB. The only outgoing senior LB on the 2008 team was Josh Miller, who was not a starter. Returning starters are Kavelle Connor and Brandon Maye, who gained a reputation as a big-time hitter last year. McDaniel did start at LB last year but is changing positions as previously mentioned. Scotty Cooper is a returning Jr. and Stanley Hunter is a returning Soph. that will also compete for playing time. Swinney mentioned that he may shuffle these guys up a little bit with respect to sam, mike and will positions.

RB- C.J. Spiller deciding to return for his senior season gives the Tigers a monumental boost going into 2009. With Davis gone, it will be up to sophomore Jamie Harper and redshirt freshman Andre' Ellington to step up and show why they were such highly rated recruits a year ago. New signee Roderick McDowell is another very highly rated recruit from Sumter, SC that will likely redshirt and join Harper and Ellington in the backfield next year. Redshirt senior Ronald Watson is the only other RB on the 2008 and has seen hardly any playing time.

WR- Aaron Kelly is another record-setting player who will be difficult to replace. Tyler Grisham will be missed because he always picked up tough yards and blocked well. Faerber is also gone. The top returning receiver is senior speedster Jacoby Ford. This year it's time for underclassmen like Xavier Dye, Marquan Jones, Jaron Brown, Terrance Ashe, Brandon Clear and Brandon Ford to become the next Tigers catching touchdown passes and breaking records. The new WR signee is Bryce McNeal, all the way from the state of Minnesota. McNeal is another player who is very highly rated and will add to the depth at this position next year.

QB- Tajh Boyd is the crown jewel of this recruiting class and we're very fortunate that he chose to come to Clemson even though we already have two very talented QB's in Willy Korn and Kyle Parker battling for the starting position this spring. Korn has suffered injuries to his throwing shoulder two years in a row and had surgery on it last December. Hopefully, the shoulder heals completely and Willy is 100%. It would be great to see the healthy player that had Tiger nation so excited coming into 2007. Parker was a highly ranked recruit at QB who is also playing baseball but has not played a down in a football game for the Tigers. Since neither has staked their claim to the QB position, I believe getting Boyd was huge. However, since Tajh is coming off of very recent acl surgery on his knee, it's highly unlikely he would be ready to start this year as a true freshman.

Coach Swinney also mentioned that preferred walk-ons will play into the mix of filling the critical need at the PK position and admitted it's one of the biggest question marks going into this year. Richard Jackson, according to my interview with Jimmy Maners, has a big leg and a lot of distance but is very inconsistent. The PK is such an important position on the team because making FG's wins games. Missing FG's loses games. Even an extra point can be the difference between losing and winning. Six out of the top 7 top scorers in Clemson football history have been PK's. So, it's imperative that we get someone who can deliver in the clutch and be consistent.

A final wrap up of National Signing Day and commentary on other announcements and information Coach Swinney discussed in the press conference is upcoming.

TIGERS RECRUITING CLASS: IT'S ALL IN THE NUMBERS

Head football coach Dabo Swinney referred to the 2009 recruiting class, consisting of twelve signed players, as the "Dandy Dozen" yesterday. There certainly has been a lot of talk about how small the class is in terms of the number of players and indeed it is an unusually low number. Of all the recruiting classes listed in ESPN's Top 25, on which Clemson's is ranked 19th, it is by far the smallest. In fact, defending national champion Florida had the next smallest class with 16. Ole Miss signed the largest class with 38 and the average class size of the Top 25 was 22.6.

The NCAA allows D-1 football programs to sign up to 25 scholarship athletes during a particular season. However, programs "oversign" (more than 25) on signing day usually for two reasons: One, they suspect some players will not qualify academically and therefore never enroll. Two, they didn't sign 25 the previous year and are trying to make up for it during the current year. If the allotment of 25 is not used in a given year, additional signees can be included the following year provided they enroll in December and are on campus for the spring semester. The number allowed still cannot exceed the max. 25 for that previous year's class. Any additional players that exceed the 25 limit from the year before count against the current class.

In Clemson's case, not only did we not oversign, we didn't sign the 25 allowed by the rules. Therefore, some speculated the low number was due to recruits de-committing after Bowden's departure. This is only partially true. Coach Swinney mentioned yesterday that two other numbers played into things: 85 and 15. The NCAA rules allow Div. 1 programs to have no more than 85 players on scholarship in total at any given time, so the 85 rule trumps the 25 rule. In essence, we only had 15 scholarships to offer and still fit under the 85 total, regardless of the 25 allowable.

One other thing that played into the 15 we had to offer is what Coach Swinney referred to yesterday as "grey shirts" Spencer Benton (PK) and Terrence Ashe (WR) being promised scholarships this year. Grey shirt players commit to a team that is over-signed and then either doesn't go to school in the fall or enrolls part-time and pays their own way. They are not officially on the team. In January of the following year, the player enrolls full-time and officially joins the team. They are technically part of the recruiting class for the current year, not the year they committed. Once they join the team, they still have the full five year window to play four years and the ability to red-shirt if they so choose.

In conclusion, we really had 17 scholarships to offer but 2 were reserved for Benton and Ashe, leaving only 15 for the new recruits. We only signed 12, so we will carry those three over to next year. Over-signing in past years "caught up to us", if you will, this year. If things had unfolded differently where 3 of the players we offered had signed with us as opposed to signing with other programs, then we would have used all our scholarships and still had the smallest number of signees of the top 25 recruiting classes. We just didn't have a huge number of outgoing seniors/graduate students and thankfully the Tigers don't have a lot of attrition due to transfers, academic casualties and players getting in trouble.

More recruiting class news and discussion of comments made by Coach Swinney regarding the future of the program coming up shortly.