Andrew Mukuba reveals he was a silent commit to LSU before going to Clemson

Texas safety Andrew Mukuba is preparing to play his first season in the SEC in 2024 after spending three years at Clemson. However, he recently revealed that he nearly started his college career in the SEC, playing for a different group of Tigers.

Mukuba was recently asked on the Beyond The Facemask podcast about his recruiting process, which ended with him signing with Clemson. He shared that at one point he was silently committed to LSU.

“It’s crazy, because coming out of high school, I had 40-plus offers. I was the No. 7 safety in Texas. But obviously you can’t go to every school, so I had narrowed it down to a top-12. And it came down to a top-3, which was LSU, Texas and Clemson,” Andrew Mukuba said. “But the crazy thing is, people don’t even know this. But at one point during my junior year, I was a silent commit to LSU. I verbally committed to LSU for a little minute.”

Ultimately, Mukuba backed off of that commitment, thanks in large part to his relationship with Brent Venables.

The former Clemson defensive coordinator and current Oklahoma head coach was able to convince the Texas native to come all the way to Clemson to play college football.

“Coach Venables, when he was at Clemson, that was my dog, man. Our relationship was different, because my recruitment picked up during COVID, so I couldn’t really visit schools,” Mukuba said. “I had never been to Clemson ever, a day in my life. So we used to all get on the phone all the time, chopping it up. We would stay on the phone for like three hours, four hours.”

Andrew Mukuba also seriously considered Texas, but Tom Herman was struggling at the time, and Mukuba expected that if he played for the Longhorns, he would have to go through a coaching change at some point.

“Then Texas was also recruiting me, but like in that span… I knew the coach was going to get fired and a new staff was going to come in. So I didn’t want to run into that situation,” Mukuba said. “Everybody knew he was going to get fired. I didn’t want to join a situation to where the coaches that were recruiting me leave and a whole nother coaching staff that I don’t even know comes in and having to rebuild the relationship all over again. So I didn’t really feel like that was necessary and that wasn’t right.”

Mukuba was a freshman All-American his first season at Clemson, before having a couple of up-and-down years, due in part to injuries. He entered the transfer portal this offseason, before joining the Longhorns.

Even though he didn’t spend his entire college career at Clemson, Mukuba is glad that’s where he started out.

“Just talking to Venables and talking to him all the time, I made the decision to go to Clemson,” Mukuba said. “And that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made, for sure.”