Recruiting Battles and WR U

Giant Disclaimer: I by no means have any inside info. I don't claim to a recruiting expert. I've been wrong many times before and will be wrong many more times. So take everything I say here with a mountain of salt.

So the profession I want to go into requires searching for sources, a lot of reading, and analyzing all of those readings and sources. So when word came out that Ray Ray McCloud and Deon Cain were visiting Auburn the weekend before signing day I decided to do some digging. I looked at other sites (free ones because I'm not paying for anything), as well as comments on this, to see what was out there. I also had a twitter conversation with one of Auburn's recruiting guys at College and Magnolia.

Based on everything that is out there I believe that Deon Cain and Ray Ray McCloud will sign with Clemson. Here is why.

Auburn's staff kept the visit quiet from the media until it was over. However, our staff knew about it beforehand so it did not come as a complete surprise to them. Dabo, Scott, and Elliot were down in Tampa last Thursday. They went to IMG and also stopped by Ray Ray's high school for an award presentation. Ray Ray also made an unofficial visit to Clemson at the end of January, tagging along on Deon Cain's official visit. Speaking of Cain's official visit, he had to delay his trip for a week because of some car accident. McCloud has come to visit Clemson multiple times. The only other school he has been to multiple times is Florida, twice, for 7v7 tournaments. He actually turned down a potential visit to Alabama.

According to Cain's head coach, Deon said the visit was one last trip to hang out with some of his friends and have fun. His mother also claimed after the visit they were 100% Clemson. On Twitter, QT stated that McCloud went with one of his high school friends to help him get more publicity. That teammate, 3* Nate Ferguson, just received an offer from USF and promptly flipped to them from Eastern Michigan this morning.

One site has claimed that Ray Ray's dad didn't want him to burn any bridges for later in life, especially since Ray Ray wants to get into coaching.

There has been very little buzz outside of initial reports of the visit. Most Auburn writers and fans are more interested in their DLine targets, such as Cece Jefferson and Byron Cowart. Those recruits are the ones that Muschamp would have a potential relationship with, not McCloud. One Auburn writer claimed that there is "little to no buzz surrounding AU lately" and that it would be an "absolute shock" if Auburn flipped either.

Here is another reason. Clemson is Wide Receiver University. Over the past two NFL drafts Clemson has had four receivers drafted, and three of them have become heavy contributors on their teams. The other, Jaron Brown, has somewhat regular playing time. Mike Williams and Artavis Scott are well on their way to proving that they have NFL talent. Clemson has shown that it can develop and place wide receivers in the NFL. Auburn has not.

I am optimistic that Clemson will hold on to both Cain and McCloud. I'm more optimistic than I was this morning. Obviously anything can happen in recruiting and it isn't over until the dotted line is signed. All of this info I got just by looking around on different websites and on Twitter. I've been wrong plenty of times and I will continue to be wrong. But I feel optimistic about this.