1. The more you know, the more informed -- and presumably better -- decisions you can make.
That's not exactly a profound revelation. Yet it is the overarching theme for this edition.
Clemson's staff approaches mid-April with four commitments, its fewest at this stage in a long while. A couple of its peers have almost triple the volume -- UGA and Notre Dame 12, Ohio State and LSU 11 -- while a few in its elite neighborhood are in the same ballpark. Alabama has five, as do USC and Florida.
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As we expressed last week, our belief remains that the metrics will show this Clemson class comparable to the last one, which posted the third-best average star rating per signee in the country.
It's not how many commitments you have now, it's the quality of the ones you have by the time you accumulate your planned number come December or February.
The marathon will eventually yield a familiar finish. But the pace the Tigers are running this race is a little different than normal, that's all.
Clemson has made its recruiting living during the Dabo Swinney era by being more scrupulous than its peers.
So without a Swinney Camp last summer, without coaches on the road for games last fall, without in-person meetings between recruits and staff for over a year, without the routine volume of high school games off which to assess, and without a spring evaluation period ... you can hopefully see why and how the Tigers are taking things slower for the first quarter.
There is a lot of time left in this game, and a lot of football left to be played.
We've only recently started reaching a point where returns are starting to come in off which to evaluate.
Recruiting camps and 7-on-7 action have gotten underway and should run steadily through the end of May. Then the page turns to college camps come June, pending final NCAA approval -- and we've heard that could come as soon as later this week.
It makes more sense to be keeping doors open at this point than closing any you might come to regret.
2. Here's a case in point:
