Before he arrived at Clemson, Cade Klubnik was a coveted five-star prospect ranked as the top quarterback in the country and one of the top prospects in the 2022 recruiting class, regardless of position.

Prior to his senior year at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, Klubnik committed to Clemson on March 2, 2021, just a few days after the Tigers offered him.

But what led the highly sought-after signal caller to Tiger Town?

Now several years removed from his college decision, Klubnik recently reflected on why he chose Clemson as a recruit, recalling the biggest reasons his heart was set on being a Tiger and a part of Dabo Swinney’s program.

“I remember Clemson, the reason I really wanted to come here… the reason I wanted to come to Clemson was because I felt like, through those conversations with a lot of coaches and everything, I felt like at times I was just a name on a checklist,” Klubnik said on the Field Talk Podcast with ESPN’s Field Yates. “And I felt like at times I just was a person somebody would call Tuesday at 2 o’clock and talk to me for 30 seconds and say, ‘Alright, talk next week.’

“When I talked to Coach Streeter (former Clemson quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter) and I talked to Coach Elliott (former Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott) and the conversations I had with Coach Swinney later in my recruitment – Coach Streeter would talk to me about, ‘Hey, how’s your family doing,’ and ‘how’s your brother doing?’ It was very intentional conversation about wanting to know me as a person, not just about football or whatever. And just the culture of what Clemson was, and just through a phone call, I knew that was just a tiny, tiny part of what it was going to be whenever I got here. I just felt something was different.”

Among the slew of scholarship offers that Klubnik held during the recruiting process was one from Texas A&M, where both of his parents graduated from. However, despite his family ties to A&M, Klubnik said his parents didn’t prod him to go there but simply wanted him to pick the place he felt was best for him and his future beyond football.

Clemson was Klubnik’s dream school. At the end of the day, he knew without a doubt that Clemson was the right choice, and the rest is history.

“Both my parents went there, almost everybody on both sides of my family went to A&M,” Klubnik said. “My sister went there. That’s the only sibling of mine that went there. My two brothers didn’t. But (my parents) never pushed me to go there. They wanted me to make a great choice that made me happy and that they felt like was going to set me up for life.

“So, they loved A&M. I kind of grew up a fan of them until I was like in the eighth grade, and then it just kind of went away. But at some point, I kind of had to just brush that off, and reality set in that I had to make a decision somewhere, and I just felt at peace about Clemson and I never really truly felt at peace about anywhere else except for Clemson.”