Cade Klubnik on decision to return to Clemson , playing Texas in CFP, more
Clemson eyes a national championship in 2025 thanks to the return of quarterback Cade Klubnik. The star player talks his growth this spring and more.
As it turns out, his team’s 69-67 loss to McNeese State in the first round of the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament wasn’t the last time Ian Schieffelin would put on a Clemson uniform.
It just won’t be for the school’s men’s basketball team.
Schieffelin, a burly senior forward who was a second-team All-ACC honoree last season, will be joining the Tigers’ football team for the 2025 season, he announced Friday.
“Excited For The Next Chapter! Go Tigers!!” Schieffelin wrote in a post on social media.
The 6-foot-8, 240-pound Schieffelin is listed on the team’s official roster as a tight end.
Schieffelin averaged a career-high 12.4 points and 9.4 rebounds per game last season for a Clemson team that won a program-record 27 games and earned a No. 5 seed to the NCAA Tournament. Despite being a senior, he entered the transfer portal last month, hoping he could earn an extra year of eligibility as the NCAA faces lawsuits over the eligibility timelines of college athletes.
Eventually, his eyes turned to a different sport.
As Schieffelin emerged as a standout for the Tigers’ basketball team, Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney had publicly praised his potential as a football player, believing he could be a fit at tight end, offensive tackle or defensive end.
“He’d play wherever he’d want to play,” Swinney said in October 2024. “… I’ll definitely have a spot.”
What was initially viewed as a joke became something more serious. Schieffelin told ESPN that Swinney called him two weeks ago offering him the opportunity to suit up for the Tigers next season.
He’ll join a Clemson roster that has five scholarship tight ends, but relatively little experience between them, with no player having more than 13 career catches. Jake Briningstool, the starting tight end for a Tigers team that won the ACC championship game and made the College Football Playoff in 2024, exhausted his eligibility after last season and signed with the Kansas City Chiefs as an undrafted free agent.
Schieffelin has football experience, as he played quarterback and tight end for Grayson High School in Loganville, Georgia through his sophomore year.
He’ll become the latest multi-sport athlete at Clemson, which saw football stars DeAndre Hopkins and CJ Spiller also compete for the university’s basketball and track teams, respectively.
The path from college basketball to tight end isn’t an uncharted one, either. Pro Football Hall of Famers Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates both played college basketball, though Gonzalez played three years of football at Cal, where he was a consensus All-American in 1996.
As he was weighing Swinney’s offer, Schieffelin told ESPN he spoke with Indianapolis Colts tight end Mo Alie-Cox, who signed with the franchise after being a four-year basketball starter at VCU. Alie-Cox, who hadn’t previously played football since his freshman year of high school, is entering his eighth NFL season.
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