By Will Vandervort.

From 1994-’97, Raymond Priester carried the football 805 times – 52 more times than James Davis’ 753 from 2005-‘08 – which ranks second to Priester’s career-carries at Clemson. After that no former Tiger has more than 691 carries, and by the way college football is going these days, it doesn’t look like anyone else ever will.

“The starter can’t play every snap,” Clemson running backs coach Tony Elliott said. “He can’t carry it the whole time. In today’s college football, the days of guys carrying the ball thirty times and lasting the whole season is just not realistic.”

These days with offenses being so high-tech and tempo being the key, offensive coordinators only want their starter getting no more than 20 carries a game. Why? They want him to be available late in the game when his team needs him the most.

This is why Elliott does not mind coming into fall training camp—which begins this Friday—with four guys vying for the starting spot at running back as opposed to only one. Clemson’s D.J. Howard, Zac Brooks, C.J. Davidson and Wayne Gallman are all neck-and-neck for the starting spot coming out of summer workouts.

“I would like to have a collective group of guys that can all do it,” Elliott said. “When you look at Andre (Ellington), we played him too much. You saw it towards the end of the season because he always got nicked up. Then we had guys that could come in and would do a good job, but they did not have as many reps because we always had that one guy taking every rep.”

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Elliott says having a running game by committee is not a bad thing. If you don’t believe him, look at Alabama. The Crimson Tide has been using sometimes three running backs in a game during their current run.

Back in the 1980s, when Clemson had some of its greatest success on the gridiron, the Tigers never truly had a feature back. When Clemson won the national championship in 1981, guys like Chuck McSwain, Cliff Austin and Kevin Mack shared the backfield. In the mid-‘80s, Danny Ford’s teams had guys like Stacey Driver, Kenny Flowers and Terrance Flagler. A few years later, it was Terry Allen, Wesley McFadden and fullback Tracy Johnson all sharing the load.

“I would like to have a stable of running backs as opposed to one starter,” Elliott said. “If you look at the standard for running backs, you look at Alabama. Alabama has had a stable of running backs for years. Yes, they have had some marquis guys. There was Mark Ingram, but then there was Trent Richardson who was right behind him, which made Mark Ingram better. When Ingram left, you had Richardson and Yeldon, then you have Drake and then all these other guys.

“I would like to have a group of guys like that.”

However, Elliott wants to have his cake and eat it too. Though he wants to have a stable of good running backs that can all be interchangeable, he also knows he needs one guy to be the starter in all those situations when it is crunch time and the game is on the line.

“That’s the guy I want in there and that’s who we are looking for,” he said.

So who is that guy? Howard, Brooks, Davidson and Gallman have all had their moments either last season or in spring practice, but none of them have yet to separate and show they are the one guy that can do it all.

“It is going to be very similar as last year in that the big theme was running back by committee. I think that is going to be my initial thought,” Elliott said. “What you hope somebody does is what Hot Rod did last year and separates himself. You hope he says, ‘This is my turn.’”

Elliott hopes Howard can become that guy.

“This is his senior year. He is a fifth year guy. He has been around and he knows the most,” Clemson’s running backs coach said. “He has a lot of experience. He tried to show signs of that in spring ball, but those other guys are just as hungry. We don’t have a set guy that I will say is the starter, but I like the competition.

“I like the four guys that are competing and then you throw Tyshon (Dye) into the mix once he gets back in mid-season and we have some good healthy competition at running back. Whoever it is, they are going to have to play to a standard. To me, it is not about who the starter is, but more about understanding what the starting running back is responsible for.”