By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

CLEMSON — Today was early signing day for a lot of sports in the Clemson athletic department as the men’s basketball, baseball and volleyball teams to name a few were able to ink prospective student-athletes to national letters of intent.

That’s not the case for the football program where, like all college football programs, Clemson will have to wait until February to sign recruits.  Head coach Dabo Swinney says it is ridiculous that they don’t have one.

“It’s a waste of a lot of people’s time,” he said following Wednesday night’s practice. “It is a waste of a lot of money and it creates a lot of the garbage that goes on in recruiting to honest with you. A lot of that would be eliminated.”

Swinney can understand that right now better than anyone. In the last week two of his commitments—Robert Nkemdiche and David Kamara—who supposedly were solid, have decided to break their commitment to Clemson and look at other schools.

“I have said this many times, and you guys know how I am. If a guy is committed and he is taking visits and all of that, then he is not committed,” Swinney said. “Whether it is someone coming here, or we have one of our commits going somewhere, that’s not commitment.

“That’s their right. I would never tell someone not to go visit another place or this or that. That is totally within a prospect’s right. But, don’t commit. You can’t expect us to hold somebody’s scholarship for them and be more committed to them than they are to us. That’s just the way I deal with it.”

Swinney goes to great length to tell his coaches not to let a prospect they are recruiting commit until he has spoken with that young man first. The Clemson coach says his goal when he first talks to them is to make sure they do not commit to Clemson.

He wants them to understand that there is no pressure and there is nothing wrong with looking at other schools. But, if they still chose to commit to Clemson, then Clemson is going to commit to them.

“It does not matter who it is, or whatever. If you are committed, that’s what it means,” Swinney said. “If you are not, you are not. If you want to be committed, but go take five visits then let’s call it recruiting because that is what it is. Let’s just recruit. It doesn’t mean we are not going to recruit you. That’s not commitment.

“I think it would really be beneficial to both sides if you had a signing day on, I don’t know there are a lot of different theories, but let’s say you had it September 15 for example. Look at us, we had like 17, 18 or 19 commits before we even played a game. If we had a signing say in September of October one, well if those guys don’t sign with you then you know they are not committed.

“You know then, I better get to work and make sure we will be able to fill our numbers because we can’t count on this guy. If he does not sign with you and he is committed, then there is obviously a problem.”

The flip side says Swinney, is the guys who do sign can finally relax and enjoy the rest of their senior year.

“They can enjoy the confidence knowing that they got their scholarship and someone is not going to pull it from them in January,” he said.

Swinney knows there are probably some cons to an early signing period in football , but he says the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes the benefits outweigh the negatives for both parties involved.

“You get guys that are committed for two years, and that is a long time,” Swinney said. “You can only sign 25 in a year and you have to go by need. If you are going to take one of this position and you get that one committed, well you have to count on him being there and you are giving him your word that you have a scholarship for him.

“In the meantime, you can’t keep recruiting other guys at that position because you only have one scholarship for them. Then all of sudden you go all the way through, and it’s not like you can start recruiting a guy in January. That’s a very rare thing.”