Does Clemson football’s NIL strategy still work? Dabo defends recruiting misses

On Sunday, a cornerback recruit picked up a Clemson hat, put it on … then put it aside and celebrated a commitment to Florida State instead.

On Monday, a top offensive line target chose Wisconsin and a wide receiver recruit once deemed a heavy Tigers lean picked Oklahoma within hours of each other.

And by the following Sunday night, after two more prospects with Clemson listed as a finalist chose other schools, a five-star offensive tackle who grew up a Tigers fan in Charlotte, revealed the school hadn’t even made his top four.

The first week of July was a revealing one on the Clemson recruiting front — and it reignited a long-running debate about whether or not the Tigers are falling behind their peers in this modern era of college football with a by-the-books strategy on name, image and likeness. But Dabo Swinney doesn’t see it that way.

“Sometimes I think people think just because a guy doesn’t come to Clemson, it’s because of NIL,” Swinney said Tuesday. “And that’s not the case. I mean, that is the case sometimes, for sure. But that’s not always the case.”

Speaking at the program’s on-campus media day ahead of the 2024 season, Swinney offered a detailed defense of Clemson’s NIL philosophy in recruiting, which came under scrutiny this month after the Tigers saw minimal movement in their class.

Clemson entered June with a 2025 recruiting class that ranked top five nationally. But the group has fallen to No. 16 in the 247Sports Composite rankings after an eye-opening stretch in which 10 more potential recruits committed to other schools after visiting campus, including five in a six-day span.

The culprit, many fans griped on social media, was NIL — and Clemson’s insistence that, while NIL is always an option for players and something the program’s devoted ample resources to, the school will never lead with money or dangle a number.

Not accurate, according to Swinney.

“There’s other great programs,” he said. “There’s other great coaches and people. And sometimes, for kids, it’s a better fit for them somewhere else. That’s just part of recruiting. That’s why I don’t really ever get caught up in who we don’t get. … The key is to focus on the ones you do get, and that’s what we’ve been able to do around here a long time.”

A ‘mentality’ change needed?

Clemson, Swinney noted, has “never had the No. 1 class or anything like that.”

The Tigers have become nationally relevant by hitting on a few top targets and nailing player evaluations on lower-ranked or less-heralded recruits — as a recent example, think safety Khalil Barnes and receiver Tyler Brown — and riding that combination to notable success.

“We’re usually (ranked) somewhere eighth to 15th,” Swinney said.

Indeed, signing a top 15 recruiting class in 14 straight recruiting cycles is no small feat. Clemson was one of only seven schools to pull it off from 2011-23. And last year’s class (No. 11 nationally) was 22 players deep, full of exciting names and potential opening-game contributors.

But the concern from fans isn’t in the numerical rankings: It’s in the Tigers’ recent recruiting losses, and the fear Clemson — which is coming off its fewest wins in a season since 2011 — is hurting itself by making NIL an appetizer but never the main course in the recruiting process at a time where competitors in the ACC, SEC and beyond are attracting players with more direct approaches.

The NCAA bans “pay for play,” or the use of name, image and likeness deals as a direct recruiting inducement, but it’s still a common practice across the college football landscape, with schools’ NIL collectives generally handling the negotiating.

Clemson, though, has committed to doing NIL “the Clemson way.”

Concerns surrounding that strategy were magnified after the team’s flashy summer official visit weekend, held in early June, didn’t yield its usual results. Clemson invited 17 uncommitted recruits to the event, per The Clemson Insider, and as of Tuesday only two of them have committed to the team.

A sampling of the misses:

• Four-star safety Gregory Thomas to Florida State

• Four-star offensive lineman Hardy Watts to Wisconsin

• Four-star wide receiver Cortez Mills to Oklahoma

• Four-star wide receiver Samari Reed to Ole Miss

• Four-star linebacker Kamar Archie to Rutgers

All five of those players had Clemson as a finalist, listed somewhere in their top three to top six schools, and committed elsewhere from June 30 to July 5.

Two days later, five-star 2025 offensive tackle David Sanders Jr., the No. 2 overall recruit in the country, released his top four schools. Despite growing up a Clemson fan in the Charlotte area, the Tigers (who heavily pursued him) were nowhere to be found. Sanders was focusing on Georgia, Ohio State, Tennessee and Nebraska ahead of his Aug. 17 commitment, he said.

Add in Clemson’s landing of another lower-ranked quarterback recruit for 2026 (the third straight cycle they’d added a QB ranked outside the top 20 at the position for his class or no QB at all), and fans on X (formerly Twitter) weren’t happy.

“The decline has begun.”

“We can’t win a bidding war.”

“Clemson has to stop with this mentality.”

Swinney and various assistant coaches, though, insisted Tuesday they remain confident in their recruiting strategies. Leading with a holistic approach helps them easily identify recruits as good fits for the program — and to hear them tell it, there are plenty out there who still do.

“We’re not an anti-NIL university,” defensive tackles coach Nick Eason said. “We have NIL here, but we still have to promote graduation, being equipped with tools for life, having a great college experience. Those things are still going to be the foundation of our program.”

“There’s a lot of things going on in recruiting, but it still goes back to relationships most of the time,” offensive line coach Matt Luke added.

Defensive ends coach Chris Rumph had a simpler take.

“If you come for money, you’ll leave for money,” he said.

Tigers’ ‘unique’ approach still works

Later that afternoon, Swinney spoke for nearly five minutes on the state of Clemson recruiting and why a model he’s always described as “unique” — with fewer total offers and fewer official visit weekends than other schools — is still resonating.

He correctly pointed out the talent in Clemson’s 2025 class — five of the Tigers’ 13 commits currently rank inside the 247Sports composite top 100 — and how this summer was “a little different” in terms of class size and timing.

The Tigers are signing a smaller class this year due to limited roster space and already had 11 commitments entering their official visit weekend. In previous cycles, Clemson has picked up commits in June and July like home wins at Death Valley.

“Y’all are all smart,” Swinney said. “Y’all can count the scholarships. … We don’t have many spots. And we know exactly what we’re looking for.”

“We don’t offer many guys first of all, so if we get one of the guys that we’ve offered, we think pretty highly of them. We’re really excited about where the class is.”

What about long-term, though? If you’re touting NIL potential but reserving those monetary opportunities (through collectives) for players already on the roster, are you limiting yourself in a world where top recruits are functioning more and more like candidates leveraging job offers and are well within their rights to do so?

And could that, along with a lack of transfer portal usage, contribute to a trickle-down effect for a program that remains among the sport’s winningest the past decade but has missed three straight College Football Playoffs and will likely rank outside of the preseason AP Top 10 for the first time since 2015 next month?

Swinney on Tuesday pointed to Clemson’s recruiting consistency and player retention rates. He revealed that freshman All-American defensive linemen Peter Woods and T.J. Parker, among others, were approached with monetary offers from other schools this offseason (an NCAA-banned process better known as tampering).

“You best believe it,” he said. “But they’re all here.”

To Swinney, that’s proof Clemson’s culture is working — at a team level, but also at a high school recruiting level, where players such as Woods and Parker heard the same pitch 2025 recruits are hearing now, about an all-encompassing experience with NIL as part of that package, and chose the Tigers over many other pitches.

And it’s a gamble Clemson’s still willing to make.

“As far as our recruiting, if NIL is the factor, we’re probably not going to get them,” Swinney said. “But if it’s a factor? Hey, we’ve got as good of a shot as anybody.”