New York City heads to Clemson: Former Tiger brings prospects to camp

Swinney and his coaching staff will welcome seven NY prospects Saturday

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Tue Jun 01 16:00:07 GMT-05:00 2021

Pat Godfrey grew up on Long Island watching the Clemson team run down the hill on television, and promised himself he would make his dream of playing for the Tigers come true. Now he’s helping young people from New York City realize their dreams of playing college football and is bringing a group of prospects down for this weekend’s Dabo Swinney camp.

Godfrey made his way to Clemson, earned a walk-on spot and eventually a scholarship before a torn labrum ended his playing days. Once he graduated from Clemson with an MBA, he returned to New York (Clemson fiancé in tow – they get married later this month) and is now realizing his dream of working on Wall Street.

But something was missing – and that something was football.

“One of my mentors from Clemson, he runs a private equity shop in Greenville, was from New York and has a bunch of friends up here. And I was talking to him and he was like, ‘Hey, if you're interested in trying to give back and be involved a little bit with football, I've got a friend who runs a great charity and they actually do free football clinics for high school kids to give them a chance to stay sharp even though everything was shut down,’” Godfrey told TigerNet. “So I started going up to the Bronx, right across from the Yankee Stadium, and training these guys every single week. And I was the O-line of D-line coach and kind of did that for a couple months, June and July, and then their season got canceled. And essentially, it was a tough time for all these kids because New York City right now is really struggling with crime.

“It's getting really bad. And all these guys that I coach are from tough parts of Brooklyn, the South Bronx, East Harlem, a lot of tougher neighborhoods. So, they view football as an opportunity to get out, like a lot of kids do. So, what we did was we created what we call the Elite Five Showcase, basically, meaning for the five boroughs. Back in October, we did it. It was a logistical nightmare to try and get everything kosher during the COVID environment. But we were able to pull it off and we were able to get the event recruited by about a hundred schools. And it was just a great thing. So, I decided, we had a career and academic component focused on low-income kids.”

The showcase is expanding this summer thanks to Godfrey’s efforts.

“It's a really great thing and I'm actually building it this summer. It's three events in the Northeast,” Godfrey said. “I have New York City, Long Island and Boston all coming up in July and I'm going to have about a thousand kids going through these showcases, which is exciting. But one thing we really wanted to do was, we were like, ‘Hey, we know there's talent up here that's comparable to the best you're going to see anywhere in the country. We owe it to some of our top guys to give them a chance to walk into a major southern camp and show that they can compete.’”

That led to Godfrey making a call to Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables.

“One of my guys, Moussa Kane, has been getting recruited by Coach Venables since about January. He talks to him every week,” Godfrey said. “He's a class of '23 guy. It's Isaiah Simmons, is really what I see when I look at him. He's about 6'2", 6'2.5" and still growing. He's only a sophomore in high school, about 187, 188 pounds. 4.46 guy, but the real thing that made him jump out to the coaching staff because he has a 48-inch, one-foot box jump. And he's got a 41-inch vertical.

“He's within five inches of the world record for one-footed box jumps, which is pretty crazy for a kid who just turned 16. And he's got a 1310 on his SAT. So that's one of our guys that we're bringing down. Moussa, the coaching staff are really excited about him. And then another guy that I've been working with is named Tariq Blanding. He's a class of '23. He's a defensive tackle, about 6'3", 275, and he's already got offers from ... let's see, Miami, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina. He's got about 10 Power Five offers right now. He went to a Rivals camp about two weeks ago, in New Jersey, and Coach V said they had him rated as the top defensive lineman. The staff had him rated as a top two linemen at the camp in New Jersey, which is pretty much all the top kids up here.”

Godfrey is bringing seven players in total and his charity is funding the trip. The group will make its appearance at camp Saturday.

“These are all low-income guys where our charity is sponsoring them and paying for the whole trip and we're getting them set up with their hotel room,” Godfrey said. “No parents. We're just chauffeuring them. I'm just really excited because what we're doing is we're bringing down seven guys from New York City who are all really young with a lot, a lot of high-end, top-end potential, a couple of whom are already getting recruited by the coaching staff. And on June 5th, we're going to be down there at Clemson and hopefully putting some people on notice that ‘Hey, New York is going to be in play.’

"And I think the coaching staff is excited because the guys that we're working with are guys who are high SAT kids, high academic kids, where they're working their tails off and we're hoping to dispel a lot of the demons that have followed New York City guys in the past.”