CLEMSON — If you are a fan of high school football in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, Khayel Sam Fong-Talia is a name you’re likely to hear about at some point soon.
The 2029 quarterback is in the very early stages of his career at Dillon, where he won the starting job as a freshman. The Wildcats, long known for their run-heavy style of offense, have begun throwing it around the field a lot more due to the arm talent of the 6-foot-2, 210-pound signal caller.
Sam-Fong Talia threw for close to 200 yards and two touchdowns in an excruciating week one loss to Scotland County (NC). The next week, he passed for more than 300 yards and three scores in a blowout win over Socastee. And he did all of that in the first half.
Back in the spring, Sam Fong-Talia took his first visit to Clemson, visiting for a spring practice. Last weekend, he was back, taking in the Tigers’ comeback win over Troy.
“I definitely liked it a lot,” Sam Fong-Talia told The Clemson Insider. “They had a slideshow put together about how they operate at Clemson, talking about how they don’t offer freshmen and sophomores. The process is very slow, very patient and every offer they give out is committable. I think that sets them apart. I have never heard of any other college doing that besides them. I think that is special.”
To say it was a weird game would be putting it mildly. On top of Clemson finding itself in an early 16-0 hole, there was a 90-minute lightning delay less than five minutes into the contest.
Once the game resumed, the stadium was nowhere close to being full, but the crowd that did remain made an impression on the young quarterback.
“Energetic. Energy everywhere,” Sam Fong-Talia said. “Everywhere we went, I could feel the energy. Even after the lightning delay, with the stadium being about 1/3 full, it was just really loud. The energy in the locker room after the game, even though they didn’t have their best game. Having that amount of energy still, it was hype.”
Before moving to South Carolina, Sam Fong-Talia resided in Utah, and after just two high school starts, BYU offered. Utah has also started to show interest, as has South Carolina and Florida State.
While he isn’t quite sure how the rest of his visit schedule will shake out, he’s hoping to be in Columbia when the Gamecocks host Kentucky and then get down to watch the Seminoles play at some point. He was invited to Tallahassee last weekend, but could not work out the logistics due to short notice.
With all of this attention now focused on him, Sam Fong-Talia is intent on remaining the same kid he’s always been as he enters this new chapter.
“Just staying humble,” he said. “My family is always giving me props about how I play football, but it always ends with talking about me staying humble. Keep my head and keep working. Because this is just the start. I can ball out my freshman year and not be able to perform my next three, and offers would mean nothing. Just got to keep working until the last snap of my senior year.”
While any potential offer from Clemson is still the better part of two years away from even being a possibility, after this latest visit, Sam Fong-Talia believes one from the Tigers would mean a little something different.
“I think it just means more when they offer,” Sam Fong-Talia said. “Other schools give out 250, and Clemson only gives out around 50. In my class, if I am one of those 50, that would be really, really special.”
Photo by Bart Boatwright