There are always interesting recruiting trends when one takes a bigger-picture look across the college football landscape rather than just the busy day-to-day recruiting news. Today, we continue the weeklong series breaking down each conference and we move to the ACC.

RELATED: Five recruiting trends developing across the Big Ten | SEC

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Clemson finished 6-7 in 2010, coach Dabo Swinney’s second season, marking the 20th time in a row the Tigers didn’t win at least 10 games, dating back to 1990.

That was the end of an era. Since that time, Clemson has dominated recruiting, dominated college football in many ways and Swinney has led the charge for the Tigers to be one of the national powerhouses in the sport with incredible reach on the recruiting trail.

Some could argue that Clemson’s recruiting classes have actually been underrated during this decade-long stretch of success, but the numbers are still impressive.

The Tigers have finished no lower than third in the ACC team recruiting rankings since 2011 but only with two first-place finishes. Nationally, Clemson finished second last recruiting cycle, sixth in 2016, fourth in 2015 and eighth in 2011, but considering how many NFL players the program has produced, those numbers seem a touch low.

Also, since the start of the 2011 season until now, Clemson’s record is 111-16.

FARRELL’S TAKE: With impressive recruiting comes impressive winning, and they feed off each other. Clemson has become one of the two or three elite programs in the country when it comes to being selective with offers and doing a lot of picking and choosing, and that’s all over the country. Smaller classes have led to lower rankings in some years, so don’t get this too twisted. The average star ranking has always been up near the coveted 4.0 area.

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From the inception of Rivals in 2002 until coach Bobby Bowden’s final season in 2009, Florida State won 10 games only once, but recruiting rarely took a hit. A few No. 21 finishes were sprinkled in there, but the Seminoles finished in the top 10 in nearly all those recruiting cycles and second nationally once.

Coach Jimbo Fisher came in and Florida State finished second nationally in 2011, fourth in 2014, third in 2015, second in 2016 and fifth in the 2017 recruiting class. Other than his second and then his final season, when Fisher basically gave up, Florida State won double-digit games every year, recruiting was off the charts and things were good in Tallahassee.

But Florida State has been slipping through the Wille Taggart years and early in Mike Norvell’s tenure, although it’s still too early to judge his outcomes. Last recruiting cycle was the first time FSU didn’t sign a five-star since 2007. In the last five recruiting classes, the Seminoles have signed more than one five-star only once.

In this recruiting cycle, Florida State is sitting at No. 28 nationally and only three of 14 commitments are four-stars. No five-stars are committed yet. Can Norvell turn the struggles at FSU around quickly or is there a long, hard slog ahead?

FARRELL’S TAKE: The Seminoles began struggling in recruiting around the same time Fisher mailed it in his last year on his way out the door. And it’s not easy to recover, as they have shown. The Noles are still a national brand, but with a new coach in Norvell and a pandemic, that hasn’t allowed him to establish some new relationships, FSU could be the third of the big three for awhile.

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Mack Brown has come back to Chapel Hill for a second act and has immediately made the Tar Heels a team to reckon with on the recruiting trail and on the field.

Former coach Larry Fedora was not a terrible recruiter as he had North Carolina in the top six of the ACC team recruiting rankings in five of his seven years and in the top 30 nationally during that stretch as well, but the on-field performance slid precipitously and the program became rudderless at the end.

Brown has quickly remedied that. His first recruiting class in 2019 finished fifth in the ACC, then third last year (No. 16 nationally) and now third again behind Clemson and Miami in the 2021 group. The Tar Heels are the only ACC school currently with a five-star commitment (DB Tony Grimes).

Plus, Brown is staying local, as every one of North Carolina’s 18 commits are from in-state or a border state.

FARRELL’S TAKE: I questioned the hire of Brown, as did many, but UNC made the right call here and recruiting is on an upswing only previously seen under Butch Davis. The Tar Heels are recruiting very well in the state and have pull in Virginia and other surrounding areas and should continue to expand out if they win. They have long been the sleeping giant in the ACC, and Mack might wake them up.

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There are a lot of talented prospects in the state of Virginia. Many of them leave the state to play Power Five football.

Over the last five recruiting cycles, when it comes to top 10 prospects in the state, Penn State has done the best job. The Nittany Lions have landed eight players in Jimmy Christ, Joseph Johnson, Brandon Smith, Devyn Ford, Ricky Slade, Nana Asiedu, Yetur Gross-Matos and Ellis Brooks.

After the Nittany Lions, Virginia Tech has done the best job, getting seven top 10 players from the state. Clemson, Notre Dame and Ohio State have landed three and then LSU, Maryland and North Carolina have landed two. Fourteen other schools have landed one each - except Virginia as the Cavaliers, as hard as it is to believe, have not landed a top 10, in-state player in the last five recruiting classes.

FARRELL’S TAKE: This is kind of sad to see, because when I got into this business Frank Beamer and guys like George Welsh and Al Groh were keeping kids at home at Virginia Tech and UVA. Now it’s a nightmare. The state is wide open for poaching with no end in sight, and some of it has to do with Beamer’s retirement and the lack of development of five-stars like Andrew Brown, Quin Blanding and Taquan Mizell at Virginia. The new coaches haven’t exactly lit up the state in recruiting.

The state of North Carolina has become fertile recruiting territory for many top programs nationally as more and more key prospects come out of that state, but over the past handful of years many have stayed home. It could be a massive recruiting advantage in the coming years for North Carolina, NC State and their neighbor to the south in Clemson, which has also found success there.

There are always sprinkles of good news for other teams in North Carolina, like Georgia getting five-star RB Zamir White or Florida State landing four-star Hamsah Nasirildeen or Ohio State getting Evan Pryor this recruiting class. But by and large kids are staying closer to home.

The Tar Heels have landed 17 top 10 players over the last few years. NC State is at seven, Clemson at five and Virginia Tech at four. No other team has more than two.

FARRELL’S TAKE: As I mentioned above, UNC is doing a great job in state, but Clemson can still pull whoever it wants out of there and that won’t change anytime soon. NC State is the real loser in this new pecking order, as it is getting killed. With teams like Ohio State, Notre Dame, Georgia and many others spot recruiting the state, this has become a battleground.