Chancellor Barclay has seen his recruitment really start to take off of late

Vanderbilt and Florida offered the 4-star OL (First Academy, Lake Mineola, Fl) last summer, and since the beginning of the year, Miami, Duke, Penn State, Ole Miss, Arkansas, West Virginia and Georgia Tech have all pulled the trigger.

Clemson won’t start handing out offers to 2026 prospects until next month, and Barclay is planning to attend a session of Dabo Swinney’s high school camp on June 4 in an effort to earn one from the Tigers.

“I got to come with discipline and technique,” Barclay told The Clemson Insider. “Because every player can’t just come and rock out. Once you get into these bigger schools with bigger prospects, you got to come with something that is off the charts. Again, discipline, effort, technique.”

The 6-foot-4, 290-pound Barclay is a Top-200 talent and one of the best interior linemen in his class. He is anxious to get in front of Luke and soak in everything he can from one of the more well-respected OL coaches in the country.

“Another thing is coachability,” he said. “That is one of the main things coaches look for. Because if you argue with a coach, you are not going to believe in getting better. You are always arguing with them, you think you know better, but they are the coach at the end of the day.”

Barclay has made multiple visits to Florida. He also visited Maryland, West Virginia Penn State this spring. When comparing Clemson to some of the other schools recruiting him the hardest, multiple things stand out, with the culture and how the coaches handle the recruiting process being at the top of the list.

“How different they do the culture,” Barclay said. “One of the first things that stood out to me was coach Matt Luke talking about them not offering underclassmen and what it takes to get an offer from them. That really surprised me and that made me respect them. Because Clemson is a big name school and when he explained to me what it takes to get an offer, it really stuck out to me. They aren’t just handing out offers, they really want to build that relationship. And if they commit, they are going to the full player development, the coaching and I really respect Clemson for that.”

Once Barclay fully understood how Clemson approaches the whole process, and how they go about handing out offers, he came to have a greater respect for how the Tigers operate. And he is hoping to earn one of those coveted offers at Clemson and add it to his ever-growing list.

“It would mean a lot to me,” Barclay said. “One, you think of those national championships, and these great players that came out of Clemson. You see what that program has been doing for a long time. You know that of you go to this school, they are going to develop you to your fullest. There are so few in the country that get that offer from Clemson, it really shows how much they think of you as a player and how God has really put you in a place to praise him.”

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