CLEMSON, S.C. — It was the fall of 2010 inside a Columbia, S.C., Chick-fil-A. Jordan Sorrells, Clemson’s present-day director of recruiting, was 23 years old — and struggling with a batch of lemons.
The former Furman quarterback had already learned how to bread the famous chicken. That, of course, was a Day 1 task. He had also familiarized himself with dropping fryers. But whenever it was his turn to spend 90 minutes juicing lemons to make the restaurant’s famous lemonade, his wife would often walk in to see her husband covered in the juice. Working as an operations manager, he had come to find out, was hard work.
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He missed football.
Just a year prior, Sorrells was finishing his record-setting collegiate career, and he wondered how he might get back in the game.
He had come from a family of coaches — his grandfather, dad, three cousins and brother were all in the industry. But the history major figured he wanted to try something new. Now, he was realizing he was wrong.
“At that point, it was a little bit too little, too late,” he said. “Pretty early on I got a sense that (Chick-fil-A) was not the long-term path. This is not where I wanted to be long term. But at that point, I didn’t have another option. I certainly wasn’t going to quit my job with nothing else.”
Sorrells worked at the restaurant in some capacity for about eight months from fall 2010 to spring 2011. The stop was a defining experience for more than one reason. Building a new store from the ground up toughened him and taught lessons.
More than anything, it gave him direction.
When it came along, Sorrells jumped at the chance to become Furman’s director of operations in 2011, which led to his showing up on Clemson’s radar in 2014. Now, he’s entering his sixth full season with the Tigers and is a key behind-the-scenes figure in Clemson’s recruiting machine. He has become a trusted aide to coach Dabo Swinney.
To understand Clemson’s consistency on the field — five consecutive College Football Playoffs and counting — is to know recruiting comes first. The Tigers signed their highest-ranked class of Swinney’s career in 2020, which included a national-high five five-star prospects and three of the country’s top 10 players ranked by the 247Sports Composite.
For his part, Sorrells was granted a two-year contract extension and an $80,000 raise this offseason by Clemson’s Board of Trustees, increasing his salary from $130,000 to $210,000.
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Talk about making lemonade.
“I think it’s really neat just to see the Lord’s faithfulness throughout the years,” Sorrells said. “Looking back, I realized the value and impact that it had in my life.”
Everything Clemson does in recruiting runs through Sorrells. His duties are to manage prospect evaluation, organize visits, oversee all communication with recruits, coordinate travel, execute recruiting events and maintain relationships with recruits and their parents.
It’s often a giant puzzle.
“Listen,” Swinney said unprompted during a February news conference held to discuss his 2020 class. “Jordan Sorrells. You’ve got to start there.”
If COVID-19 had not shut down in-person recruiting through at least the end of May, Sorrells would now be getting ready to send the Clemson staff out on the road. Ultimately, Swinney and his 10 on-field assistants are responsible for deciding which prospects receive a Clemson offer. But Sorrells, an air traffic controller of sorts, makes it possible for them to get face time with recruits and their families to begin with. In December, Swinney was in Maryland to visit top-ranked 2020 recruit Bryan Bresee, quarterbacks coach Brandon Streeter was in California to see DJ Uiagalelei and wide receivers coach Tyler Grisham was traveling with offensive coordinator Tony Elliott to see Ajou Ajou in Canada. Sorrells coordinates who is where. And when.
But don’t be fooled. His job is far more than that.
“He is just such a people person. He’s good on his feet and with the presentations and the things that you have to make as a recruiter that have to really be sincere and have to really be believed by your audience — he’s just good at that,” his father, Tim, said. “He’s good at selling people on the things that he believes in.”
When coaches return from the recruiting trail by early May, in a typical year, Sorrells takes their evaluations and organizes them into Clemson’s system.
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By June, he’s heavily involved in the logistics behind Clemson’s camps, some of the most important events of the year for coaches to evaluate a prospect athletically and personally. Just ask Ajou. He visited Clemson for the first time in the summer of 2019 to attend camp and earned an offer by the time he left.
Things tend to quiet down in June and July, giving Sorrells more time to spend with his wife, Sarah Kathryn, and their three children. There is a heavy week in July that keeps Sorrells busy, though, when prospects are allowed to visit campuses before the August dead period begins.
Once August rolls around, it’s time to start prepping for the season. By September, that means maintaining contact with the current cycle of recruits, which in this case would be the 2021 class, while also starting to heavily communicate with 150 to 200 members of the 2022 class.
Home games are busy, but road games give Sorrells and his staff — complete with on-campus recruiting director Ty Clements and administrative assistant Lindsey Morris — time to prepare for what’s coming when the Tigers return to Death Valley. November typically features a large official visit recruiting weekend, and then things get extra busy as the signing periods in December and February approach.
“That’s the biggest time of the year for us,” Sorrells said. “There are a lot of times in the year where it’s a puzzle that you get to figure out. I do enjoy that piece of it.”
Furman prepared him.
As a player, Sorrells’ name appears 70 times in Furman’s record book for his accomplishments from 2006 to 2009.
The lefty quarterback still holds individual records for most completions in a career and a single season. He is tied for most career passing touchdowns and finished his career as Furman’s passing yardage leader with 6,278.
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“He just understood,” said Tim, who was a Furman offensive assistant for more than three decades. “You could tell him something one time and he got it. He was a kind of guy that made everybody believe it was going to be OK. It was going to be fine. ‘We’re going to get this done.’”
(Courtesy of Furman)Sorrells also gave to Furman as a staff member.
When Bruce Fowler, the Furman coach from 2011 to 2016, was first hired to take the head coaching job after serving as Vanderbilt’s defensive coordinator, Sorrells was quick to call with congratulations.
Fowler was Tim’s roommate and his wife roomed with Sorrells’ mother at Furman. The two families were close, and Fowler planned to retain Tim, an assistant on the previous Furman staff that had just been fired.
When Sorrells called, Fowler quipped that he could always leave Chick-fil-A and come back to his alma mater if he wanted.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, good one. Hilarious,’” Sorrells said, brushing it off.
But Fowler wasn’t joking.
In creating the full-time job for a director of operations, he wanted Furman, an FCS school, to at least try to catch up to some of the bigger universities on the administrative side.
Sorrells had no experience, but he knew the value of hard work. Fowler also knew Sorrells had the personality to connect with recruits and their families.
“Every age group across the spectrum, from small kids to older adults, (he related to) as a young guy in his mid-20s,” Fowler said. “I just knew that he would be a fantastic guy to put in that position.”
Sure enough, within about two weeks, Sorrells had things rolling.
Despite having a small FCS budget and no predecessor to talk shop with, he set up Furman’s system and looked for ways to improve.
Because of how quickly Sorrells seemed to hit his stride, Fowler had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to keep him at Furman long. Sorrells stayed for four seasons.
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“He just really kind of set the standard for Furman at that position and became just so valuable to us at Furman. Of course, Coach Swinney got word of that,” Fowler said. “I knew that the word was going to get around.”
In 2014, Sorrells visited Mike Dooley, Clemson’s director of operations, on campus. Dooley was Sorrells’ defensive coordinator when Sorrells was a decorated player at Greenville High and was happy to lend advice.
On his way out of the visit, Sorrells, then 27, mentioned in passing that if Clemson ever had a job he’d be a good fit for, to let him know. On a Friday afternoon, later that fall, Sorrell’s phone buzzed with a text message as he was heading into a Furman team meeting.
“It looks like there’s going to be a recruiting job open here,” Dooley wrote. “Let me know if you’re interested.”
Sorrells applied, and Swinney was impressed. It wasn’t long before the coordinator of recruiting communications was promoted to assistant director of recruiting, followed by director of recruiting operations.
“He really believes the importance of the relationship side of stuff,” Tim said. “So he just fit perfectly with what Coach Swinney and all his staff wanted to do.”
Clemson already has 10 commits in its Class of 2021, which means Sorrells and the rest of the recruiting operation have been busy.
The Tigers plan to take about 18 recruits total, so the smaller-than-usual class is already about halfway full. That includes a commitment from the top player in the nation by the 247Sports Composite: defensive end Korey Foreman out of Corona, Calif. High on Clemson’s list is North Carolina running back Will Shipley.
“(Sorrells was) very much involved,” four-star defensive end Cade Denhoff, a Clemson commit, said of his recruiting experience. “My family and I are close with him. I talk to him every time I’m up there. (He was) mostly a recruiter. He would talk to my parents a lot about the Clemson program and what makes it such a special place.”
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One day, Sorrells could develop into a chief of staff or take on a different role for a program. But for now, the cycle continues. The 2022 class will soon come into focus.
Recruiting never stops.
(Photo of Sorrells: Courtesy of Clemson Athletics)
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