Feldman - Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting

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Copyright 2007 by Bruce Feldman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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First Diversion Books edition November 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-483-7

To my family, for all their love and support

A grizzly sound surges through the hallways of the Indoor Practice Facility on the University of Mississippi campus. Its as if someone were trying to start an old lawn mower. The noise grows louder as, rounding a corner about thirty paces away, a bear of a man with short black hair and the build of a refrigerator appears. He stalks his way toward you, a silver aluminum bat dangling from his hand.

A new day has come for da Ole Miss Re-bels, Bay-beh! he huffs in a husky Cajun accent to no one in particular. A new day!

This is Ed Orgeron. And he is not just making noise. A native of Louisiana, the 44-year-old had just finished his first year as the head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels. Their record in 2005: 3-8. Just plain awful, especially to someone whose previous coaching stop was USC.

For decades Ole Miss football has been better known for its pregame tailgate parties than for anything that took place after kickoff. In the college games roughest, most competitive league, the 74-year-old Southeastern Conference, the Rebels have been a perpetual doormat, drifting from one lousy season to the next.

Orgeron (pronounced O-ZHUR-on) was brought in to turn that around by doing what he does better than any coach in the business: identify, and recruit talent. He was given a four-year contract. In return, he was to make Ole Miss a legitimate SEC title contender.

This was Orgerons first head-coaching assignment, and it began in a swirl of controversy.

Shortly after Ole Miss announced his hiring in 2004 to replace David Cutcliffe (4429 in six seasons), reports surfaced about alcohol-related, off-the-field behavior problems that had cost Orgeron his assistant coaching job at Miami a dozen years earlier. Then, in his first three months on the job in Oxford, Orgeron had to fire two assistant coaches for alcohol-related incidents. Rival coaches whispered that Orgeron wasnt cut out to be a headman. They told anyone who would listencoaching buddies, the media, high school recruitsthat this was a train wreck waiting to happen.

Orgerons Cajun caveman persona had already proven to be great fodder for the fans of other SEC schools. They quickly developed a taste for mocking his halting speech patterns and gruff exterior.

But Orgeron was no punch line in the world of college recruiting. His rep in coaching circles was legendary. And so was his toughness.

Once, while he was at Miami, he allegedly threw Warren Sapp out of practice because he didnt like the linemans attitude. Orgeron said that if Sapp really thought he was so tough, he should show up behind the UM practice field at midnight, where Orgeron would take him on. And at Ole Miss, in his first meeting with his new team in Oxford, Coach O supposedly tore his shirt off and challenged every single one of his new Rebel players to try him.

Some of Orgerons closest buddies in the game say theyre not sure whats true and what isnt. (Some admit theyre afraid to ask, just in case more of the wildman tales are true than they figured.)

But no one whos ever worked with him disputes the fact that this guy is the best recruiter working in college football today. It was on Orgerons watch as USCs recruiting coordinator-defensive line coach that the Trojans amassed a stash of talent that spawned two national championship teams and had NFL personnel people giddy. His former boss, USC head coach Pete Carroll, marveled at what his burly assistant could do. He said Orgeron was as responsible for the rebuilding of the Trojan empire as anyone. Called him a one-man recruiting whirlwind.

It was Orgeron who, in 2000, while working for a then-rebuilding USC program, beat Notre Dame to land Shaun Cody, the nations most sought-after high school defensive lineman. Orgeron sold Codys dad, a lifelong Fighting Irish fan, that he could turn his son into a surefire NFL player and spark a USC renaissance.

Orgeron also discovered an unheralded 511, 280-pound introvert named Mike Patterson at a summer football camp. Orgeron loved Pattersons quickness and his ability to use his hands. He dubbed him Baby Sapp, a perfect nickname since Patterson idolized the former Miami star. Unfortunately, then-Trojans head man Paul Hackett thought Patterson was too short and too round and didnt want to offer him a scholarship. But when Hackett got fired, Orgeron sold his Baby Sapp to new coach Pete Carroll.

Baby Sapp and Cody, along with two other recruits during Orgerons reign as recruiting coordinatorReggie Bush and Matt Leinartbecame the backbone of two national title teams. (Bush was the shining star of USCs recruiting class of 2003, later hailed by Rivals.com as the greatest in modern college-football history. The class of 2003 was literally worth a fortune to USC. The year before this crew arrived, the school reported making $38.6 million in football revenue, roughly what it had made in 2002. By 2005, that number had swelled to $60.7 million.)

Patterson was a first-rounder (Eagles) and Cody a second-rounder (Lions) in 2005. Bush and Leinart were first-rounders (Saints and Cardinals, respectively) in 2006.

Unearthing and signing gems like Patterson is the surest way to build a team. The challenge, of course, is identifying such prospects. Most major college programs begin their recruiting year with 1,000 or so names, gleaned from a variety of sources. From that shopping list, they sign up to 25 players to binding letters of intent on the first Wednesday in February, better known as National Signing Day.

To football-crazy fans in some parts of the country, National Signing Day has become practically a holiday.

To Ed Orgeron, it is the day that will make or break his career.

Orgeron would be the first to say that the recruiting game is tricky to read, even for coaches who have spent decades in the business.

Basketball recruiting is a whole different ball game. Well before signing time in college hoops, virtually all of the nations top 500 prospects will have displayed their talents against each other at AAU tournaments and at summer camps. The best of the best can be seen competing in actual games. The sneaker-camp circuit was where a young Kobe Bryant distanced himself from Tim Thomas, the other guy vying for top-dog honors in his class.

In football, you essentially have just a prospects game footage to study. But even thats a trickier proposition to translate once you consider the variety of different systems employed in high school football.

Otherwise, colleges make do with some 40-yard dash times and reports written up from Internet fan sites. I remember hearing about this one linebacker from a combine in terms that made it sound like he was ready for the NFL, recalled one ACC assistant. They wrote about how he could do this and that, and how his muscles bulged out from that spandex stuff he was wearing, and how he moved great. But when we screened his game tape, he may have been the biggest pussy in shoulder pads Ive ever seen.