SC’s top football recruit signs with Clemson. Why did FSU try so hard to flip him?
In college football’s arms race, head coaches go to great lengths to stockpile as many highly talented high school recruits as possible. Fans of top programs expect teams to win year after year, and getting the best recruits can be the difference between head coaches winning a lot of games and getting fired.
This arms race often leads some head coaches to visit players already committed to their in-conference rivals to try and change their minds.
South Florence High School defensive lineman Amare Adams is a prospect so talented in football that college coaches showed up to watch him play a different sport, just to get some face time.
Standing almost 6-foot-4 and nearly 300 pounds, the relatively quiet Adams has unteachable size and speed. Despite being a raw prospect early in his high school career, he has the physical traits and ability to knock opposing quarterbacks out of games.
Adams ranks as the top football player in the 2025 South Carolina high school recruiting class, and many speculated which school he would pick. Adams ultimately pledged his services to the Clemson Tigers in December 2023 and officially signed with the Tigers on Wednesday.
Drew Marlowe knows how far some coaches went to recruit Adams. Marlowe is Adams’ coach, and he’s won a state championship since becoming South Florence High School head coach in December 2019. Besides Adams, Marlowe has seen many of his best players recruited by top college programs.
Despite Adams’ verbal commitment to the purple and orange, one coach thought he could convince the South Carolina native to drop the Tigers and become a Seminole.
Marlowe said Florida State University head coach Mike Norvell flew to visit Adams in January or February of 2024. Norvell arrived with a position coach at South Florence in the afternoon and stayed for several hours.
The Seminoles head coach met with Adams and his father, according to Marlowe, and watched the South Florence standout’s basketball game before departing. While at-home visits are more common, Marlowe said it’s the only time during his five years at South Florence that a Power Four Conference head coach visited the school to recruit a player.
“I’m sitting there thinking like, ‘Here’s a guy who last year barely missed College Football Playoff, and he’s taking six hours to recruit a kid who’s committed to Clemson,’ ” Marlowe said. “At the time, (Adams) already committed to Clemson ... that’s uncommon in my experience.”
It was a bold tactic, but Norvell’s aggressive recruiting wasn’t new. Florida State was one of Adams’ top choices to play college football, and FSU actively recruited the Palmetto State native for months. Florida State coaches called Adams two to three times a day, and 247Sports reported he visited the campus in October 2022.
The Seminoles’ strategy also seemed warranted, given the their highly successful 2023 campaign that signaled a hopefully bright future.
Under Norvell’s stewardship, the Seminoles went undefeated during the regular season. They won the Atlantic Coast Conference title game but were denied a spot in the former four-team College Football Playoff.
Stability important for Amare Adams
Ultimately, the Seminoles’ outreach and Norvell’s visit didn’t sway Adams away from Clemson. Adams’ decision to stick to his first choice paid off, considering the emphasis on team stability and getting playing time that helped the South Florence defensive lineman make his original decision.
The confidence and hope around the Florida State football program dissipated in the season that followed Norvell’s visit.
Despite being among the top-ranked teams entering 2024, Florida State had a disastrous season. It won just two games compared to 13 in 2023. During the season, Norvell fired both his offensive and defensive coordinators. Some questioned whether Norvell should remain at Florida State, with others asking if the buyout clause in his contract was too onerous a burden on the university to make firing him worth it.
The 2024 season led to instability at Florida State and leaves its future uncertain. Both uncertainty and instability made one of Clemson’s ACC rivals a non-option, Adams’ father, Stan, said when discussing where his son would commit in October 2023.
The elder Adams said before Amare chose Clemson that continuity and stability within the football program were crucial when evaluating programs pining for his son’s athletic ability. Stan Adams said continuity was something Florida State’s ACC rival Georgia Tech lacked. The Yellow Jackets thus likely removed themselves from recruiting the defensive lineman, while the Seminoles were one of Amare’s top seven choices.
“Stability is big because I know him, and he’s not going to go to the school because of the brand,” Stan Adams said in October 2023. “He’s probably going to go to the school because of the relationship he has with a coach, and I want him to understand that sometimes coaches leave, and if that’s a main thing for you, you have to look into a program with stability.”
Since Stan Adams mentioned stability a year ago, the situation at Florida State and Georgia Tech has changed.
Georgia Tech beat Florida State in Ireland for the first game of the 2024 college football season and finished the 2024 regular season 7-5 under third-year head coach Brent Key. With Key’s guidance, the Yellow Jacket almost beat Georgia and became bowl-game eligible, while the Seminoles’ struggles became a weekly hot topic of conversation.
Meanwhile, Adams’ dedication to Clemson stayed strong.
He indicated he wouldn’t decommit from the Tigers and re-open his recruitment despite seven former members of Clemson’s 2025 recruiting class opting to look elsewhere. He doubled down on his loyalty to the Tigers in interviews and posted a photo of himself on X (formerly known as Twitter) donning a Clemson uniform after one user commended him for staying with the program.
Adams said in October 2023, his only condition for picking a college program was that he could play as a freshman. Dabo Swinney has a track record of using first-year players like T.J. Parker as significant contributors on defense.
Recruitment news has featured more than just sour reports for Tiger fans.
Clemson convinced Plant City High School quarterback Chris Denson to flip his commitment from Coastal Carolina in November 2024. 247Sports rates Denson as the 51st-best high school quarterback in the 2025 recruiting class.
Adams ultimately put pen to paper on Wednesday despite the best efforts of one rival ACC head coach to change his mind. Now, Norvell will have to find a different player for his arsenal to possibly block Adams in a future ACC match-up in a college football arms race that never stops.
