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YOUR BALANCE
Charlotte Recruiting
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Charlotte Recruiting


May 19, 2014, 8:43 AM

Clemson football is a major brand name, especially across the South. As such, it’s no surprise that Clemson does so well pulling top rated recruits out of cities like Atlanta and Jacksonville. What draws lamentations though, is Clemson’s inability to do so in Charlotte, NC. Clemson’s campus is located a mere two hours from Charlotte, closer than any other school in a “Power Five” conference except Wake Forest and South Carolina. As such, many Clemson fans feel Clemson is missing a tremendous opportunity. How tremendous is that opportunity? We’ll focus on hard data from the 2009 to 2014 recruiting classes to find out.

4 & 5 Star Recruits from the Charlotte Metro



We look exclusively at these elite recruits because we can any college football program would be interested in the majority of them, given the average rating for even the best recruiting class is less than 4.00 (Alabama had the highest average star rating in 2012 at 3.92). As you can see in the table above, Charlotte has only produced 20 four or five-star college football recruits in the past six recruiting cycles. Therefore, even if a University were to dominate the area and get over 50% of the top recruits, it would only amount to about two recruits per cycle on average. Not exactly a tremendous opportunity, though nothing to ignore.

To further dig into the data, I broke the data by the recruit’s destination school (where they enrolled out of high school) and by graduating class. Below, in bold is the University with the number of four or five-star recruits from the Charlotte metro to the right. Below that, it is detailed out by the recruiting class. Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina were the only schools to pull multiple of these elite recruits to their program in this six year window. North Carolina did the best job, as you can see the highlighted seven, indicating they’ve pulled seven over this time span including three in 2009.

Destination of 4 & 5 Star Recruits from the Charlotte Metro



North Carolina pulled and impressive 35% (7/20) of the top recruits from the area. This is enough to make fans of other nearby schools shutter with envy. South Carolina and Clemson, both of which are closer to Charlotte than Chapel Hill and are more prominent football programs, combined to land only three recruits. Now to dig a little deeper, we look at each recruit by name, position, and star rating. The columns are (from left to right): destination school, Rivals 4* recruits, Rivals 5* recruits, and the sum of both.

4 & 5 Star Recruits from the Charlotte Metro



With all the detailed information now presented, we see that Germone Hopper is the lone elite recruit from this window who signed with Clemson University. He redshirted 2012 and didn’t make a big impact in 2013. He also missed part of Spring Camp due to academic issues. Although one could parse through and pick out “busts,” it is not a sound logical endeavor because it supposes that elite recruits from Charlotte are not as good as elite recruits from other places. With a sample of just 20 players, this is unfair conjecture. Furthermore it fails to consider that players from other cities may be more likely to go to schools with better coaching staffs. It is best to trust the expert evaluates and assume an unspecified four or five-star will more often than not be better than a lesser rated recruit.

The above table about also breaks out the star ratings to separate the four and five-star recruits. Of the four five-star recruits, three went to SEC schools. Again, this is a small sample size, but if you’re a Clemson fan you’d like to do better.

Overall, we see that Charlotte does not produce a tremendous amount of elite prospects on an annual basis. 3.33 per cycle was the average for the six year window inspected. That said, no one school has dominated the area, though Florida has pulled two of the four five-star prospects while North Carolina has pulled six of the 16 four-star prospects. Finally, we see Clemson has pulled just one elite recruit from the area, so while the opportunity may not be as huge as many have lamented, it is hard to deny the data which loudly proclaims that Clemson is not succeeding in pulling the elite college football recruits from the Charlotte metro area.

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Considering the fact that Clemson has been in the top


May 19, 2014, 9:30 AM

15 in recruiting in each of the past few years...maybe Clemson has gotten what they wanted, where they wanted it.

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Re: Considering the fact that Clemson has been in the top


May 19, 2014, 9:36 AM

Not a surprise that UNC does best there, Charlotte has a very large UNC fan base thus some of these kids have grown up tarheel fans.

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Re: Considering the fact that Clemson has been in the top


May 19, 2014, 9:40 AM

I have a friend that coaches in charlotte at a school with a lot of talent. He said Pearman was just not as good a recruiter as other that recruit the area.

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Pearman not a good recruiter


May 19, 2014, 10:46 AM

Great insight, thanks for the inside knowledge.

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Clemson doesn't recruit a lot of YanKees.***


May 19, 2014, 9:36 AM



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Geville Tiger on Clemson football , "Dabo's only problem is he has to deal with turd fans questioning every move he makes.”


Re: Clemson doesn't recruit a lot of YanKees.***


May 19, 2014, 10:45 AM

Charlotte is the Northern most point of the deep South. I would agree that North of Charlotte is barely the South. I live up there now and it's not very Southern, but Charlotte is like 15 minutes from Fort Mill. It's still the South.

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Re: Clemson doesn't recruit a lot of YanKees.***


May 19, 2014, 11:54 AM

Charlotte is very transient because it has a great economy. Unfortunately it has lost a lot of southern charm.

I would argue that NC is very southern as a whole. Just go to any rural area in NC and you'll see.

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Re: Clemson doesn't recruit a lot of YanKees.***


May 19, 2014, 3:23 PM

Yeah, but the mid-major towns like Winston-Salem and Greensboro don't feel very Southern like a Greenville does.

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Two Words, One Name


May 19, 2014, 1:49 PM

Danny Pearman.

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The Charlotte press is very pro UNC, always has been. It is


May 20, 2014, 6:24 AM

/was for whatever reason mildly anti Clemson. For years when reporting on Clemson, if it was negative the headline would read "CLEMSON" , but if it positive if was always just " Tigers" . Anyone routinely skimming the sports section only would see negative articles or loses when CLEMSON was in the headlines. The good articles were covered, but they would not jump out at you as being about Clemson, with only Tigers in the headline.

This seems to have improved some, but I think the journalism majors from UNC have a decker able bias.

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Still early ----- discernible bias***


May 20, 2014, 6:28 AM



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