I don't subscribe to the way the websites rank the teams.
It should be about the quality of the player signed. They're all assigned values so I look at their average player ranking.
Doing that, they're basically a top 5 program yearly. There's a lot of teams ahead of them in those years where those ahead are 2 to 3 points lower on player average but pushed past them in the team rankings due to more players signed.
Clemson recruits top tier recruits, at least they have been during their run. ****, we ranked one spot ahead of them one year and had 7 more commits if my memory serves me correctly. That's insane and overall, it was close. Guess which class I'm rocking with if I'm being impartial.