Last week, the NCAA made the decision to suspend all in-person recruiting through at least April 15 in response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. That means schools currently cannot host recruits for unofficial or official visits.

From an official visit standpoint, this instituted dead period does not affect Clemson. Per head coach Dabo Swinney’s policy, the Tigers do not allow prospects to take official visits to their campus in the spring.

“We don’t do spring official visits,” Swinney said. “A lot of people do those. That’s a new rule that passed a couple years ago. We’ve not done any. We don’t do any spring official visits. I just think that it’s easy to take an official visit, it’s a little harder to come on your own, but you’ve got to really be interested to come on your own. So, it’s just kind of been our philosophy. That’s what we do.”

For Clemson, the downside of not hosting spring official visits is the possibility of recruits taking those visits elsewhere and committing early, though that might not be the case as much this year.

Meanwhile, the current situation does negatively impact other schools across the country who utilize the spring for official visits, including powerhouse programs such as Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Florida, Auburn and LSU that Clemson competes against on the recruiting trail.

The dead period figures to especially hurt schools like South Carolina that don’t recruit at Clemson’s level. Those type of schools try to entice top prospects to take official visits in the spring, knowing it is more difficult to attract them to campus in the fall when they face more competition for visits with other schools hosting big-time game matchups.

Under normal circumstances, rising senior recruits are allowed to take official visits beginning April 1 through the first three weeks of June, so if the suspension of recruiting is lifted on April 15, then prospects would still have time to get spring officials in.

However, because of the coronavirus pandemic, it remains to be seen if recruits will be allowed to resume taking visits once April 15 rolls around. Right now, it appears possible the suspension will extend beyond that date.

While that is a concern for other schools, it is something Clemson doesn’t have to worry about. As far as official visits go, it’s business as usual for the Tigers, who will wait until the fall before they start welcoming official visitors.

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