Note: The following appears in the SMU football gameday program.
If you were to call Cade Klubnik at 8 p.m. on a Monday night in 2020, your call would, undoubtedly, go straight to voicemail. Friends, relatives and teammates had six days and 23 hours to call the then-high school quarterback, but that eight o’clock hour was set apart from socializing, junior year math homework and even family time.
For Klubnik, Mondays from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. were exclusively booked to talk to Clemson’s coaching staff.
After an initial phone call confirming that Monday evenings worked best, Klubnik set a weekly alarm on his phone to ensure he never missed a call. For five years, the ping of this reminder sounded from his phone at 8 p.m. sharp each week.
“A few months ago, I finally deleted the reminder,” said the Austin, Texas native with a laugh half-a-decade after the initial call with the Tiger staff. “I made sure I called at 8 p.m. every week, and we kept growing in our relationship.”
Despite a clear time to talk with Clemson’s coaches, Klubnik’s recruitment process was holistically blurry…literally. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the majority of the five-star prospect’s introduction to college football came through Zoom meetings and FaceTimes, pixelated presentations that tried to piece together a snapshot of each school’s culture.
“My entire recruiting process was over Zoom, FaceTime and phone calls, so I felt like a checklist for a lot of people. A lot of schools would call me and say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ and hang up after two minutes. But when I was calling Coach (Dabo) Swinney and Coach (Brandon) Streeter, we’d sit there on the phone for 30-45 minutes and talk about everything but football. We would talk life, talk about our family and talk about our faith. It was really cool.”
Due to more pandemic-related regulations, Klubnik was also unable to make an official visit to Clemson’s football facility early in his junior year. Still, his family wanted to immerse themselves in the small lakeside town with famous hills and an infamous Valley they had seen only in computerized fragments.
In lieu of a program-sanctioned tour, Klubnik and his parents, Tod and Kim, made the 18-hour trek from Texas and quickly found themselves talking to orange, purple and passion-clad Tiger fans on the streets of downtown Clemson.
“My dad and I started talking to students and workers around here, and I said, ‘This place is really special.’ Meeting strangers that don’t have anything to do with who I’m going to be around every day, I could tell there was greatness around here.”
Despite seven months of phone calls about “anything but football” and a cross-country trip to visit Tigertown, Klubnik had not yet received an official offer to play quarterback for the Tigers, even after a season in which he led the Westlake High School Chaparrals to an undefeated record and state title.
In a 2024 episode of “House Call,” Clemson’s Emmy-Award-winning video series, the two-time USA Today Offensive Player-of-the-Year reflected on this stretch of his junior year, marked by uncertainty, anxiety and lots of waiting. For Klubnik, staying content amid a whirlpool of unknowns was uncomfortable.
His solution to quiet his thoughts included a single sheet of notebook paper, two one-inch pieces of tape and a daily reminder. According to the documentary, Klubnik taped the paper to his mirror, which was blank except for a few words. At the top, the paper read, “My life…it all began when…”
Below the unfinished sentence were 24 empty lines. Just above the lower piece of tape, Klubnik wrote, “God writes my story. I’m all in.”
To the 2022 Texas Gatorade Player-of-the-Year, this seemingly elementary craft represented something much deeper, a commitment to contentment in waiting.
Little did Klubnik or the fans he met on his unofficial visit know, just a few weeks later that waiting would end. On March 1, 2021, Swinney officially offered the signal-caller a chance to be “All In.”
On his first official visit to Clemson, Swinney and his staff offered Klubnik a scholarship. After months of waiting, rereading the note on his mirror and keeping up the weekly calls, he committed to Clemson on the spot.
“He’s special,” said Swinney after his signing. “He’s magic. There’s a reason why he’s the No. 1 guy in the country. He’s proven that and he’s earned that. Every competitive environment that he’s gone to, he’s risen to the top.”
After a period defined by patience, life sped up quickly for Sports Illustrated’s No. 1 quarterback in the nation. Within a year, Klubnik signed his letter of intent to attend Clemson, led his team to another state championship, won the MVP award at the Elite 11 camp and graduated from high school.
After living 10 year’s worth of life in 10 months, Klubnik moved to Clemson in January 2022 with his roommate, Adam Randall, and began a new journey being the new kid.
“The transition was really smooth and it was really fun,” recalled Klubnik. “I was thankful to be plugged in with great people right away. I came here and went right to work throwing routes on air with Adam within a week. It’s crazy how fast four years goes, because that feels like just a couple weeks ago.”
In less than a year after his arrival at Clemson, Klubnik led the Tigers to an ACC Championship Game victory and earned the starting job in the Orange Bowl. Just as they practiced, Klubnik found Randall for three connections against the Volunteers.
Three years later, Randall is now the Tigers’ starting running back, Klubnik is a tenured veteran instead of a wide-eyed freshman and the alarm to call Clemson’s recruiting staff has been shut off. Within those three years, Klubnik believes the culture that made Clemson his “dream school” has helped shape him more than he believed possible.
“I knew it was going to be led by a great person like Coach Swinney and it was going to be a faith-driven program, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of it.
“There’s so many great men here who are mentors of mine and so many great players who I’ve been able to play with who I can just sit down and eat lunch with and talk life. It’s been unbelievable and I’m so thankful that I came here.”
Another factor that has helped Klubnik grow, according to the senior, is learning to lead and respond in hard times. In his sophomore season, the Tigers began with a 4-4 record after losing to a quartet of ACC programs.
For the first time in his career, Klubnik experienced glaring adversity on the gridiron.
“My mind goes back to the 4-4 record my sophomore year and having to live through that. I’ve learned so many life lessons from that alone that I’m now carrying on two years later and the importance of having a tight circle, but also the importance of finishing. We finished with five straight wins that year, and hopefully we do something similar this year, but even better.”
After Klubnik and the Tigers bounced back with a win over No. 15 Notre Dame following that rocky start to the 2023 season, Swinney, nearly engulfed by fans on Frank Howard Field, made a famous declaration in a postgame interview.
“I know we’re down and everybody’s throwing dirt on us, but if Clemson’s a stock, you better buy all you can buy right now!”
In the background of the viral video, Klubnik stood behind his head coach, grinning with joy, embodying the very “stock” Swinney had invested years earlier with those weekly 8 p.m. phone calls.
As Swinney predicted, the Tigers finished with a 9-4 record, and one season later, they won the ACC title and advanced to the College Football Playoff for the first time in four years.
Two years after the Notre Dame victory, Klubnik believes Swinney still has some return on his investment yet to come.
“We still have some great moments ahead that I’m really excited about,” added #2. “I’m just trying to enjoy each and every day.”
