If he played football, ‘he’d be a problem.’ Meet Dabo’s favorite Clemson hooper
Ian Schieffelin hung his cleats up a long time ago.
But Dabo Swinney keeps on asking.
Every time Clemson’s football coach sees the basketball team’s All-ACC big man, whether it’s in the tunnels of Littlejohn Coliseum before a game or somewhere else on campus, he always has the same message — and delivers it with a big grin.
“Son, there’s always a spot for you if you want to try …”
As a senior and preseason all-conference selection, Schieffelin is one of the faces of a Tigers basketball program that reached the second Elite Eight in program history last spring as a No. 6 seed and enters 2024-25 with NCAA Tournament expectations under longtime coach Brad Brownell.
He’s also the face of the longest-running bit between the Clemson football and basketball programs:
That if he really wanted to, the 6-foot-8, 240-pound forward and one of the country’s fiercest rebounders could be a pretty good college football player, too.
“He’d be a problem,” Swinney said.
Let Swinney be clear: When he talks about Schieffelin (pronounced CHEF-lynn) as a Clemson football prospect, he’s joking. He’s too close with Brownell, and too invested in the success of all sports on campus, to seriously take a stab at such a heist.
Schieffelin was the ACC’s Most Improved Player last year after averaging 10.1 points, 9.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists as a junior, and he goes after offensive boards in a way that’s going to earn him some sort of professional basketball opportunity.
But a man can dream, so Swinney does.
“Schieff would probably wanna be a D-end or a tight end,” Swinney said Tuesday during his weekly news conference. “I’ll definitely have a spot. Man, we’ve got a lot of rev share (money) ready for him, too, if he wants to pass up wherever he’s going to come on over here.”
College basketball analyst and Clemson basketball alum Terrence Oglesby added some fuel to the fire when he visited a Tigers practice in late August and wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that Schieffelin had the “exact same” frame as Jimmy Graham before Graham swapped basketball for football at Miami in the late 2000s and eventually became a star NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints.
“He looks even strongerif that’s possible,” Oglesby wrote.
Ian Schieffelin’s football career
The man at the center of this discussion is nothing but entertained. Speaking at the ACC Tipoff preseason media event in Charlotte last week, Schieffelin made it clear: Football was not his calling, and he’s long been at peace with that.
Basketball was — and is — his first true love.
But yes, Schieffelin said, there’s absolutely an alternative universe in which he could be catching passes down the seam for Clemson’s No. 10 football team, instead of posting up in the paint for a men’s basketball team picked to finish fourth in the ACC.
Watch out, Jake Briningstool.
“I could play some tight end,” Schieffelin said. “I actually have pretty good hands. I think I’d be all right.”
Growing up in Atlanta as a multi-sport athlete, Schieffelin said tight end was by far his favorite football position. But he spent his formative middle school years as the team’s starting quarterback, he said, because he was “the one kid that could throw the ball far” on a team that fed into Grayson (Ga.) High School.
He was big and tall with some mobility to his game, a bit like former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, he said. Schieffelin had a heck of a backfield mate, too: Phil Mafah, Clemson’s current starting running back and a fellow 2021 Grayson alum.
“We didn’t lose many games,” Schieffelin said. “But I didn’t make many reads either.”
Adding to the Clemson football intrigue: Schieffelin attended a number of the program’s summer youth camps over the years. His team even won Swinney Ball — the seven-on-seven team competition Clemson holds for each age group — heading into his freshman year of high school.
Swinney and Clemson recruit the state of Georgia and the Atlanta region heavily, and they’d already plucked a number of successful players from Grayson over the years, such as RB Wayne Gallman and QB Chase Brice. On top of that, current Tigers safeties coach Mickey Conn was the head football coach at Grayson for 16 seasons before joining Clemson in 2016 as an assistant. The pipeline existed.
As such, there was, as one recruiting website framed it, at least “some interest” from Clemson in Schieffelin as a football recruit — not specifically at quarterback, but as a big-bodied prospect to keep an eye on nonetheless.
Until he quit football heading into 10th grade.
“Basketball has always been where my heart is,” Schieffelin said.
It helped that he grew another 3 inches, from roughly 6-5 to his current height of 6-8, and started picking up more and more traction as a basketball recruit than he did as a football player, where at that point, he was primarily a blocking tight end.
At least one ACC football assistant was disappointed to hear it.
“I remember one of the Syracuse football coaches told me it would be the dumbest decision I’d ever make — going to basketball instead of playing football — because there’s only one LeBron,” Schieffelin said. “Obviously, I didn’t listen to him.
“But I’m glad I didn’t.”
‘He’d be pretty good’
Since committing to Clemson as a three-star Class of 2021 recruit with only one other high-major offer (Virginia Tech), Schieffelin’s gone up and up. He was a key piece of Clemson’s first Elite Eight team in 44 years as a junior, and his usage is expected to soar as a senior with the last year’s starting center, PJ Hall, off to the NBA.
“He’s never been afraid of physical contact or anything,” Brownell once said of Schieffelin. “Just smart enough to be a basketball player, not a football player.”
But not enough for Swinney to keep the gridiron comparisons — which Schieffelin has no problem with and calls “awesome” — rolling along in earnest.
Last year, as Clemson football was preparing to play No. 4 Florida State and 6-foot-6 receiver Johnny Wilson, Swinney joked he might need to borrow a basketball player to simulate Wilson’s height for his starting defense on the scout team.
One particular guy came to mind.
“When he’s done with basketball I’m gonna get him out here at D-end, tight end,” Swinney said of Schieffelin. “That’s a football player.”
He added of Schieffelin on Tuesday: “He’d play whatever he wanted to play. He’d be an unbelievable left tackle, but he wouldn’t want to play that. He’d wanna be one of them sexy positions. ... Nobody gets too excited about the left tackle.”
For a moment, it was like Swinney could see it from the podium: Schieffelin, a 6-8 power forward who’s so effective on the glass that opposing teams have started guarding him with their centers, applying those skills on the grass.
Then, back to reality.
“I don’t need a text from Brad,” Swinney said, laughing. “(Schieffelin) needs to focus on what he’s doing. Got a lot of basketball games to win this year, and I’m excited to see him lead the charge. But yeah, he’d be pretty good.”
