Cade Klubnik is living out his dream at Clemson, and that’s part of the reason the star signal-caller decided to stay with the Tigers for another season.

Klubnik recently appeared on the Pure Athlete podcast and discussed why he wanted to come back to Clemson for the 2025 campaign – his fourth college season, all with the same school he started at, something that doesn’t happen too often with a lot of top-level quarterbacks in the current college football landscape.

“I dreamed of playing college football my whole life, and I never dreamed of doing it to make money,” Klubnik said. “I dreamed of doing it because that’s what I want to do — I want to run out on a football field in front of 100,000 fans and play the game I’ve been playing since I was three years old, and not to go make money. I think I kind of had to remind myself of that perspective, of that’s the dream I’ve been chasing.”

Klubnik shined after taking over for DJ Uiagalelei in the 2022 ACC Championship Game, earning MVP honors while leading Clemson to a win over North Carolina. Klubnik then made his first career start in the Orange Bowl vs. Tennessee to end the 2022 season.

Klubnik would go on to experience some growing pains during his first full season as Clemson’s starting quarterback in 2023, when he completed 64 percent of his passes for 2,844 yards with 19 touchdowns and nine interceptions.

The former five-star prospect had his share of struggles but did progress as the season went along and capped the season with a game-winning drive against Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, giving Clemson a five-game winning streak to end the year following a 4-4 start.

The adversity that the 2023 season brought was a new experience for Klubnik, the former Texas Gatorade Player of the Year who went 27-0 as a starter his last two years at Westlake High School.

Klubnik said he turned down offers to transfer elsewhere following his uneven sophomore season, opting instead to remain at Clemson and grow from the adversity he faced.

“So after my sophomore year, sure, I had some teams call up and ask me to come and blah blah blah,” Klubnik said. “But I’m like, ‘No, I’m staying here. I need to get better. I trust in Coach (Dabo) Swinney, I trust in Coach (Garrett) Riley. I need to put my head down and I need to go get better because there’s a lot of people depending on me.’”

Klubnik recalled a conversation he had with Swinney that motivated him to work even harder for the Tigers’ head coach.

“I think one of the biggest things after my sophomore year was — which was exactly a year ago — was Coach Swinney pulled me into his office and told me, ‘Hey, I’ve got quarterbacks that want to come play here too. I’ve got players wanting to come play at Clemson and come replace you,’ blah blah blah,” Klubnik said.

“And he told me, ‘I believe in you and I trust in you, and let’s go to work.’ It’s one thing to have a couple people in your ear saying this or this, ‘You should leave.’ But when the head coach comes up and tells you that he believes in you after you just had a not great year — that kind of just flipped something, like, ‘I want to go play for you even harder. I want to go to work for you even more.’”

Klubnik’s work paid off in a big way this past season when he put together a career year as a junior, accounting for 43 combined passing and rushing touchdowns. The Austin, Texas, native threw for 3,639 yards and 36 passing touchdowns with only six interceptions over 14 games, while adding career highs with 463 rushing yards and seven rushing scores.

The prolific season presented Klubnik with other opportunities, but he ultimately decided to run it back with the Tigers one more time in hopes of leading his team to a national title in 2025.

“I went, put my head down and just didn’t give two craps about anything last year in terms of people’s opinions outside of this building,” he said. “Just went to work and obviously made a big leap in my work or in my play from my sophomore to my junior year. I had a big decision to make just over a month ago on whether I was going to move on and go to the (NFL) Draft or come back for my senior year, or other schools still calling. And it was an easy decision. …

“I told Coach Swinney on the day that I committed – he offered me and I committed on the spot, on the phone call – and I said, ‘I’m coming to win a national championship,’ and that’s something that is still sitting on the table for us. So, that’s why I came back and that’s why I didn’t leave. I love this place so much, and it’s a place that I’ve grown so much as a man and as a player. But the leap that I took from my sophomore to my junior year, I want to double that leap and go take another one. So, stuff that I wasn’t even doing a year ago, I’m doing now, so I want to go take another leap and go get better again, because I know I have to be.”