Excerpts From 'Meat Market' on Ed Orgeron

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Sabanocchio

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Found these snooping around the interwebz and thought some of you might like to read.

Already looking ahead


Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from ESPN The Magazine senior writer Bruce Feldman's "Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting." To purchase visit ESPN Books.

The book, published by ESPN Books, goes deep inside the mysterious world of recruiting and into the war room of Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron. The excerpt picks up right after national signing day 2006.

February 1, 2006, was National Signing Day for the Recruiting Class of 2006, but the primary focus in the Ole Miss war room had long since shifted to the Recruiting Class of 2007, the one just 371 days away from becoming Ole Miss Rebels. The coaches were still waiting on a few faxes from recruits, but the Rebels had been boring in on the 2007 crop for months.

Ole Miss already had four commitments for next year's class, including middle linebacker Chris Strong, who Orgeron was saying would be the nation's top linebacker prospect in his class. Strong was a shockingly nimble 255-pounder. His uncle Eddie had been a star LB at Mississippi in the 1990s.

Just the day before, the Rebs had gotten a commitment from small-town tailback Robert Elliott, a long-striding glider who'd been unearthed by former Rebels assistant George DeLeone. "That's why you gotta go to every school in the state, no matter how small, because you never know," Orgeron told his staff after the good news about Elliott.

Orgeron, dressed in a red Ole Miss golf shirt and blue slacks, held court with rows of video tapes separated by position lined up in front of him. Normally the recruiting meetings would be more formal and organized, with the entire staff seated around the table. (The Rebels meet in the war room to go over recruiting at 8:00 a.m. every Wednesday during the entire year.) But since today was Signing Day, things were a bit more chaotic.

For most of the morning, there'd been between 6 and 10 assistants seated around the table watching the film. Almost always present were Dave Corrao and Grant Heard, the Rebels' two graduate assistants; Kent McLeod, the slender 28-year-old coordinator of football operations, who looked more like a golfer than a football man; and Barney Farrar, a former Clemson coach in his late 40s, who had just joined the staff as an assistant athletic director.

Also omnipresent was Hugh Freeze, a baby-faced, slightly graying, 36-year-old former high school coach from Memphis who was the Rebels' recruiting coordinator in 2005. Freeze, strictly a yes sir/no sir kind of guy, was Orgeron's right-hand man, and now his tight ends coach as well. Freeze also handled many of the peripheral details that kept Ole Miss football humming.

That very day, for example, he'd talked with the caterer about what kind of shrimp would be served at Friday's celebration dinner to thank everybody who'd helped land the Class of 2006. Freeze told Orgeron he could get a deal on popcorn shrimp for $17 a head. Or else it'd be $22 per if they opted for jumbo shrimp. Orgeron paused for a few heartbeats and then told him to go for the jumbos: "We're going to run a first-class program, and we're going to do it first-class."

Many of the evaluation tapes the Rebels would see that morning would be of defensive players or at least prospects they were targeting as defensive players. With the lights dimmed, a red introduction panel appeared on the big screen in front of the room: Golden Tate -- 5'11", 185, 4.4 -- Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Every tape was labeled with an intro like this, although about the only things Orgeron took for granted were the kid's name and the town he came from. As for height, weight, and time in the 40-yard dash, Orgeron would believe it when he or a member of his staff measured it. He had seen more than his share of times when high schools and the recruiting services overinflated a kid's dimensions or speed.

The Rebels saw Golden Tate as a cornerback. His tape, however, began with a series of dazzling offensive plays. He was juking would-be tacklers, leaving them staggering into each other. He was spinning. He was cutting. He was stopping and starting. His ability to regain top speed, going from first to fourth gear, was startling. That kind of quickness was critical for a defensive back who had to break on the football after a receiver had made his cut. Tate also was showing go-the-distance speed, running away from everyone on the field. A few other clips displayed that he had good hands and could make catches in traffic.

"We sure he's not a running back?" Orgeron asked.

"I talked to him," responded Freeze, the coach who recruits Tennessee, "and he says it doesn't matter."

Orgeron: "Only thing we gotta figure out is, what's our strategy? I know he says it doesn't matter, but somebody somewhere is going to sell this kid on something."

Freeze: "We're one of the first to offer him. But Tennessee's also offered him."

Orgeron: "You're not afraid of Tennessee, are you?"

Freeze: "No, sir, I am not."

The son of a former Mississippi high school football coach, Freeze is soft-spoken and calculating, coming across as a polar opposite of Orgeron. Freeze graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a degree in mathematics. He never played college football. While attending college, he had done missionary work throughout the country and in Russia and Australia. Now he said coaching was his "calling."

Freeze arrived at Ole Miss in 2005 as the former boy wonder coach from Memphis who had taken over the Briarcrest Christian School program at age 26 and led the Saints to two state championships in football and four more in girls' basketball. He brought with him former Briarcrest Christian star Michael Oher, whose improbable ride to the SEC from homelessness was the subject of Michael Lewis' best seller The Blind Side.

Orgeron said he was impressed not only by Freeze's moxie and coaching savvy but also by his strong connections in the Memphis area, always fertile soil for SEC football programs.

Two months before coaching his first game at Ole Miss, and with Freeze at his side, Orgeron vowed at a Rebels booster meeting at the Memphis Botanic Garden that he planned to "build a fence around Memphis" to lock up the city's top recruits. He even guaranteed it.

News of Orgeron's comments didn't too sit well with Memphis head coach Tommy West or with Tennessee's Phil Fulmer, both of whom took jabs at Orgeron's big talk. Locally, some newspaper columnists and radio talk-show hosts had fun with it too. But neither West nor Fulmer, whose Vols were coming off an embarrassing 5-6 season, were laughing when Signing Day rolled around in 2006 and the Rebels landed a half-dozen of the top players in the Memphis area.

As Freeze glanced back to the video screen to observe the next recruit, Orgeron turned to secondary coach Chris Rippon, who was seated on the other side of the table: "We may need to go in the JC ranks to get some corners."

Orgeron proceeded to click through three other defenders, none of whom kept his attention, before he came to Johnny Brown, a six-foot, 180-pounder with 4.59 speed, from Charleston, Mississippi. As the tape started, Corrao, sitting in the front of the room by the screen, started nodding. "This kid's a stud," he said confidently. "He's awesome."

Brown proceeded to make the assessment look good, running ball-carriers down on the tape's first four plays. Your first thought was that if this guy ran only a 4.59 forty, most of the other guys were probably three-tenths slower than the times they claimed.

Rippon: "He's got great balance. His change of direction is the best we've seen." Orgeron: "Good. Listen up, everybody. If you see something you like or something you don't like when we're watching, say it, loud and clear. We can all learn from each other."

(Later, after the staff had left the war room, Orgeron explained that he really wanted to hear his coaches' observations. He was still trying to get a read on their evaluation skills. He said there was no one right answer or way to evaluate, but he felt pretty confident in his own eye, and he was just as interested to get a read on theirs.)

"He's fast-twitch," added offensive coordinator Dan Werner. Fast-twitch refers to the muscle fibers connected with explosive movements. Long-distance runners are said to be more wired with slow-twitch fibers, while sprinters are charged with fast-twitch.

Orgeron: "Okay, we gotta get him in the boat early because everybody is gonna come after him."

Brown sounded like a realistic option. He'd been in Oxford the previous summer with his high school team for a 7-on-7 passing league tournament. He'd also been to Starkville, home of Mississippi State, for another 7-on-7 tournament, a passing-game simulation in which an offense runs plays with no linemen except for the snapper against an opponent's linebackers and defensive backs. Brown had actually been on the Rebels' radar for a year, but Orgeron knew that once other SEC schools scrutinized Brown's tape as closely as Ole Miss had, he would have to battle to keep the kid in-state.

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Next up was a DB prospect from a small out-of-state school. The first five plays were all run away from the player's side of the field. Twice he only took a few steps before easing up after the play was over. Another clip showed him sprinting in to jump on a pile. He did look athletic. Later he darted in front of a receiver running an out pattern, but the quarterback threw the ball way behind the play. "He's 5'11" and ran a 4.62 at a combine," Orgeron read from some notes McLeod had given him.

"I'm not offering if he's 5'9", but if he's 5'11" we might take him."

"I saw him," one of the coaches chimed in. "He's probably 5'10" coming out of the locker room."

Orgeron's decision was to label the kid as a "prospect." They would try and get him to come to their summer camp for a closer look. If not, somebody else could go jump on him. The feeling was that he might not be any better than people already in the program. Or maybe they just needed more film showing him doing something. Next on the screen: Harrison Smith -- 6'3", 215, 4.5 -- Knoxville.

Smith was a virtual one-man team: LB, S, RB, and TE were listed under "Position." Indeed, the two-minute tape showed Smith doing everything from making open-field tackles to running guys down from the backside. During one five-clip sequence he looked like John Lynch, the Broncos' hard-hitting All-Pro safety. The next sequence, he looked like a white Eric Dickerson, gliding downfield past tacklers. He also made a bunch of highlight-worthy catches and runs-after-catch. The last shot was of Smith making a diving TD grab.

"That was with six seconds to go in the state playoffs," Freeze noted. Orgeron: "Everybody like him?"

"Yes!" the entire room responded in unison.

Without missing a beat, Freeze flipped open his cell and called an assistant in the Ole Miss recruiting office: "Get Coach Pemberton on the phone please."

"Hey Coach," Freeze said into the phone 30 seconds later. "We're having a great day down here. Coach O is ready to offer Big Harrison a scholarship."

Orgeron to Freeze, attempting to whisper: "Have him call my cell phone."

Freeze's voice lowered as he asked Coach Pemberton, "They already offered him?"

Freeze chatted just enough to satisfy the demands of politeness, said good bye, clicked off his phone, and turned to the room: "UT offered him last week."

And then, in a softer, more upbeat tone: "That's okay. They'll take for granted that they got him, and we'll out-recruit them."

Two feet away, Orgeron was smiling as he stared at the blank screen and offered a parting message to his staff: "Alright now, don't go out there trappin' and come back without no furs!"

It only took a few hours of watching Orgeron and his staff studying film to grasp one of the truisms of player evaluation: Everybody good must look like somebody else good. Coaches subconsciously use this comparison technique to reassure themselves, or perhaps to try and make objective something is that is inherently subjective. This is, after all, an industry completely in love with its tape measures and stop watches and percentages.

So that swift, hard-nosed white linebacker? He was Dan Morgan. Harrison Smith, the white defensive back was John Lynch. And so on, right down the list of potential blue-chippers. Not good enough that they looked like they could be good. They had to remind you of somebody else who you knew was good.

Sometimes the fit seemed natural and sometimes not. But almost always, if you looked closely enough, you'd find somebody who made it big to put next to a prospect you liked and make your guy look even better.

The trouble with this sort of cross-comparison is that coaches sometimes get a little gun-shy if they can't ID an antecedent for a prospect under review.

That had been Karlin Brown's bad luck. For the linebacker from Tallahassee's Lincoln High, the Rebels video screen flashed these vital stats: 5'8", 200. 4.4. The 5'8" part prompted a collective groan.

"Uh, 5-foot-8?" one of the assistants in the front of the room muttered in feigned disbelief. "Oh, jeez."

But only two plays into the film the mood of the room shifted from skeptical to intrigued. A squat, pit bull-like hitting machine, Brown played at a different speed than the other players in the film, and this was an elite level of high school football.

Brown's game was powered by leverage and explosiveness. His low center of gravity turned out to be an advantage, almost as much of one as his speed burst. He didn't appear to have just first-step quickness; it was more like five-step quickness. He was constantly in attack mode. Clip after clip showed Brown flying into the frame and blasting ball-carriers and blockers backwards.

During the early 1990s, Miami had a 5'8", 200-pound linebacker named Rohan "the Rat" Marley, famous for being the son of reggae legend Bob Marley. Rohan was a lights-out hitter too, but he didn't seem to be this fast.

Maybe Brown was the next Rohan Marley.

Orgeron: "I loved the Rat."

Matt Lubick, the recruiter who handles north Florida for the Rebels, announced to the room that Brown also ran the anchor leg on Lincoln's nationally ranked 4x100 relay team. So in essence, Lil' Karlin Brown with his short strides didn't just appear to be fast, he now was fast. Officially fast, as in legitimate speed. That's what comes with a track background: speed cred.

Orgeron: "Show of hands, who thinks we should not offer him?"

Half the hands in the room went up.

Orgeron: "Okay, who thinks we should offer him?"

This time, maybe three-fourths of the hands went up. Obviously, a few people from the first group had been on the cusp. The basic breakdown: The offensive coaches wanted the little linebacker, the defensive guys were still skeptical.

Orgeron: "I don't know. If he's listed at 5'8", that probably means he's more like 5'6."

Offensive line coach Art Kehoe: "How about we say, 'If you can ride the roller coaster in Tallahassee, we'll take you.' "

Orgeron: "Or if you're tall enough to try and walk under this table and you hit your head, we'll take you."

The verdict: Call the folks at Tallahassee Lincoln and tell them their little linebacker was going to be offered a scholarship by the Ole Miss Rebels.
 
#3
#3
We'll change the bricks on Manning Way


The dismal first month of the 2006 season convinced Orgeron that he had to identify more defensive linemen and linebackers.

Even though the Rebels had five D-linemen already committed to the class of 2007 -- three tackles (Ted Laurent, Drake Nevis, Jerrell Powe) and two ends (Stanley Porter, junior college transfer Dion Gales) -- none of the five was a sure thing to make it to Oxford in the fall of 2007. Laurent, Porter, and Gales were borderline students. Nevis was a decent student, but as a Louisiana kid, Orgeron feared he might be tempted to de-commit if the home-state LSU Tigers made a move. And Powe's situation, given his history with the NCAA Clearinghouse, could only be categorized as a long shot.

As it stood in 2006, Orgeron had to move two freshmen tight ends to defensive end and flip a freshman guard to nose tackle in fall camp just to be able to put a D-line on the field.

Vandy weekend would give the Rebels a chance to woo one of the players on the top third of their out-of-state defensive tackles board, Ian Williams, a 300-pounder from the Orlando area. The weekend visit by Williams was one of the five official campus visits allowed recruits by NCAA regulations. The Rebels were excited by the prospect of hosting him.

The Internet recruiting websites had Williams listed as a "four-star" prospect, which seemed a bit generous to Orgeron & Co. The Rebels staff didn't think Williams had the explosive power or quickness of Laurent and Powe. But they ranked his talent level close to that of Nevis, and Williams was a solid student who wouldn't have any trouble getting admitted. A few weeks back, he took an official visit to Notre Dame and hadn't come away raving, if Internet reports were to be believed.

Matt Lubick reported that Williams was leaning to Florida. (And, in fact, Williams later acknowledged that he'd given the Gators his commitment the preceding spring.) The Rebels had their doubts whether the Gators would save a scholarship for Williams once some more highly regarded prospects showed interest. In addition to Florida and Notre Dame, Williams was also considering Clemson and Auburn. He had told the Internet reporters that he would make his announcement on November 3 before his high school's Homecoming Game.

"We're fourth right now for him," Orgeron said Friday morning, about eight hours before Williams was scheduled to arrive on campus. "But after this weekend, we'll probably be second."

Kent McLeod, Ole Miss' coordinator of football operations and the person who orchestrates the itinerary for the official visits of all recruits, later said the Rebels had a lot of distance to close: "His mom's not coming with him. That's usually not a good sign."

Since schools are not allowed by NCAA rules to pay for the travel or hotel room for a recruit's family, it's not uncommon for a prospect to come alone on a visit. (The schools are allowed to pay for the player's meals, travel to the campus, and hotel room.) McLeod said if an out-of-state kid was seriously considering committing, someone in his family usually came along to check things out. But given Williams's abbreviated time frame before his announcement, it didn't look too good for the Rebels.

Williams was the second recruit the Rebels had hosted on an official visit this season. Jackson, the big junior college receiver, was the first. In accord with NCAA rules, schools are allowed to host 56 prospects on official visits, which usually begin Friday afternoon and end Sunday morning. As is the case with every other football weekend, the Rebels game against Vanderbilt was scripted right down to the minute.

At 1:15 p.m. Friday afternoon, Orgeron assembled the staff in the war room for a quick meeting. He went over every facet of the upcoming weekend, ranging from what time the Rebels would have their Friday walk-through to what time dinner would be served in the team's banquet room. Then, at 1:58, he put in Williams's eval tape so his coaches could get reacquainted with their visiting recruit.

The staff watched four plays without comment. "I remember at first we didn't like him much till we saw more film," Orgeron said. It didn't help Williams's cause that he played for a bad team (06 at the time) and that he'd been asked to play most of the season at offensive guard. The Rebels had tape only from his junior season.

Williams made a few plays in which he impressed more with effort than athleticism. The staff was hardly wowed. "He's got good feet," Lubick offered. "Nice explosiveness, huh?" No one bit. Another minute passed, and then, finally, Williams darted inside to smother the quarterback. That got Orgeron fired up. The next clip showed Williams bull rushing over an undersized lineman. The next one showed a bit more explosion off the ball into the backfield.

"That's pretty good right there," Orgeron said.

A replaying of the tape distanced Williams's stock from Laurent's, but Ole Miss wasn't in a position to be all that choosy. "He could probably help us right now," Orgeron observed, and then turned to Lubick. "Anything special with him, Lube?"

"He went to Notre Dame already and didn't really like it," responded Lubick. "I guess he felt like he didn't really fit in."

"Okay, then," Orgeron said. "We are going to shock him."

Before the staff left the war room, Orgeron had one final message: "Let's not talk about how we should've won games. I don't wanna hear that. No, it should be, 'We're about winning championships, and you're going to be a part of it.' "

The schedule for Williams's weekend in Oxford was almost as detailed as the team's. He arrived at the Memphis Airport on Northwest Airlines flight No. 943 at 5:02 p.m. After McLeod got Williams checked in at his hotel, the Downtown Inn, he drove the young man back to the Ole Miss football offices so he could sit in on the Rebels' defensive meeting, which was scheduled to begin at 7:15 sharp.

But first, at 6:45, there was a half-hour meeting just for the coaches and the players involved in special teams. Each of the Rebels' four assistant coaches involved in an aspect of special teams addressed the room to hammer home the week's big strategic points, stressing Vanderbilt's tendencies and going over their own possible trick plays. Each coach also took the opportunity to give his own mini pep talk.

Game coaching is a very small part of Ed Orgeron's overall responsibilities at Ole Miss.

The meeting was heavy on call and response, with clapping in unison any time one of the coaches called out "Rebels, Ready-Ready?" Players responded to each prompt with battalion-worthy precision. It was hard to imagine that a 14 team could sound so unified and sure.

At 7:15 p.m. the Rebels formed into offensive and defensive units with their own coaches. As the players scurried to their respective halves of the team room, all of the coaches except Orgeron formed an assembly line and began sliding floor-to-ceiling panels around a track system to divide the room.

The separate meetings featured more of the same revved-up vibe. The team looked as if it were primed to take the field. In Orgeron's address, he emphasized how the Rebels took it to the Georgia Bulldogs for four quarters. He called out the names of the players who stepped up, which only seemed to get the other players fired up.

"And Greg Hardy, you kept on knockin' the sh-- out of that offensive tackle," Orgeron yelled as his body literally started shaking. "You were knockin' his head off! He didn't want no more! Are you gonna get after it like that tomorrow?"

This was Orgeron's way not only to begin to raise the Rebels' spirits for tomorrow's kickoff but also to bolster the confidence of the other players in the room that Ole Miss had a few more playmakers than just All-America middle linebacker Patrick Willis. For Williams, seated in the back row of the small auditorium, the team meeting was a window to get a read on the pulse of the team.

"It was very intense," Williams said later. "I loved it. Charlie Weis was more of a sit-down-and-lecture guy. Coach O is more of a player's coach."

At 7:45 p.m., Williams left the Rebels football complex to get dinner with his host for the night, junior defensive tackle Jeremy Garrett. An honor student and one of the team's leaders, Garrett wouldn't be playing in the Vanderbilt game because of a leg injury, so he didn't ride down to Tupelo to stay with the team, which always spent the night before a home game outside of Oxford to minimize distractions.

"Jeremy is a great kid," said McLeod. "He's a very clean-cut, mature guy." For his hosting duties, Garrett gets paid the NCAA-allowed $30 by McLeod.

As Williams headed out to eat dinner with Garrett and Lubick, the Rebels boarded three buses to make the 45-minute drive to Tupelo. The team, as always, would bunk at a weathered old motel called the Summit.

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At 9:00 p.m., in a vacant banquet room, assistant AD Barney Farrar had already set up the Rebels' film projector so Orgeron and the staff could spend an hour studying more prospects. Maurice Harris, another Ole Miss assistant AD, arrived toting a gallon of milk and two boxes of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies from a nearby grocery store.

The first player the Rebels watched was Rolando Melancon, a defensive tackle from Lutcher, Louisiana, just down the road from LSU. Dressed in the Tigers purple and gold, Melancon (pronounced Meh-LAHN-so) looked so much like an LSU lineman that Orgeron couldn't help but hum the Tigers battle cry: "Duh-da-duh-dah!" as in "Hold That Ti-Guh!"

Orgeron had seen tape of Melancon many times over the past two years. He loved him. Melancon wasn't a huge inside player, but he looked unblockable as he smashed a guard into a running back, toppling both of them. "Gaaawd!" Orgeron howled.

Melancon had been a dominant presence in southern Louisiana high school football since his freshman season, when as a 245-pounder, he led Lutcher to the Class 3A state title and was named district defensive player of the year.

"This is the quickest kid we're recruiting," Orgeron told the room. "He says he's 6'3", but he's only about 6'1", and it don't matter. He's Mike Patterson."

Melancon's tape had eyes popping. He burst past centers before they could get out of their stances. "You gotta work your magic on this kid, Frank," Orgeron said to Frank Wilson, the Rebels' recruiter in Louisiana.

"He says he likes Michigan," Wilson replied.

"Michigan? What are his grades, Frank?" Orgeron asked.

"Not good," Wilson said. "It's gonna be close for him to make it."

"Okay," said Orgeron, shaking his head. "Michigan, huh?"

Farrar changed tapes, and the Rebels watched two more defensive players. One was a junior college defensive end from Georgia Military College, Jarius Wynn, whom the staff liked. ("He's really fast-twitch," said Werner.) The other was an outside linebacker who got canned after five plays. ("He's alligator fast," Orgeron said, the terminology for a player with good straight-line speed, but without the ability to go side to side.)

They then watched a half-dozen offensive linemen who failed to grab anyone's interest. The only energy in the room came from the cell phone of tight ends coach Hugh Freeze, who was getting calls from junior recruits about every three minutes.

Every kid was "Big" to Freeze, as in "What's up, Big Donte so-and-so?" Orgeron was thrilled that Freeze was setting the tempo for the rest of the staff in junior recruiting. The bad news was that one of the calls Freeze received was from Kenneth Davis, a junior tailback already committed to Ole Miss. Davis was calling to say he thought he tore his MCL that night.

"Show us something, Barney," Orgeron said, hoping to rejuvenate the room. Farrar put in tape of Joe McKnight, the New Orleans-area tailback whom Wilson had proclaimed in the spring to be the best recruit in the country, then guaranteed getting him on May 24.

The Rebels had marveled at McKnight on the various tapes they'd seen. His eval tape had footage from McKnight's first national TV appearance, when his school (John Curtis Christian) played the nation's top-ranked team (Alabama's Hoover High of MTV's Two-a-Days fame). The Patriots fell behind 14-0. Then, McKnight took over, catching three passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns and making the game-sealing INT as Curtis won 28-14.

Joe McKnight

Jeff Thomas/Maxpreps

Still undecided Joe McKnight could be the biggest catch of this recruiting class.

McKnight was the first recruit Wilson offered a scholarship to after he joined Orgeron's staff in 2005. McKnight was a sophomore back then. At the time, McKnight's coach, J.T. Curtis, a Louisiana high school legend, kept trying to sell Wilson on his seniors.

"Yeah, all right, J.T., but how can I get Joe?" Wilson persisted. "I wanna start recruiting Joe."

Wilson realized then and there that if the Rebels had any shot at landing McKnight, they had no time to spare. Orgeron, too, had brainstormed about a plan to get McKnight to Oxford. Going head-to-head with LSU for a player whom the Rebels staff believed to be the best back from New Orleans since Marshall Faulk certainly sounded like a long shot, but Orgeron suspected adding another heavy hitter into the chase could change that.

USC, which had already gotten commitments from blue-chip tailbacks Marc Tyler and Broderick Green, knew about McKnight, but the Trojans were recruiting him as a cornerback. USC linebackers coach Ken Norton had even told one of Curtis High's assistants that he thought if McKnight went to USC, he'd start three years at cornerback and go right to the NFL as a first-rounder.

Before USC coaches went out on the road for their spring evaluations last May, Orgeron dialed up old pal Pete Carroll and told him Joe McKnight would be their next Reggie Bush and was better than any back in the country. "I wanna help Pete," Orgeron later said, "but it doesn't hurt to get Joe away from LSU."

To Orgeron, USC was the perfect diversion. Sure, USC could open the kid's eyes to things far beyond Tiger country. But USC was also a four-hour plane ride away. Orgeron figured if there were some confusion in McKnight's mind, it might give Ole Miss a chance. Ole Miss might become a viable alternative for a kid who was conflicted, especially since Orgeron felt that if anyone could win McKnight's trust, it was Frank Wilson.

"If he goes to USC, he's gonna win the Heisman," Orgeron said. "His tape is better than Reggie's high school tape. If he comes to Oxford, we'll change the bricks on Manning Way to McKnight Way."

"Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting" is published by ESPN Books. This excerpt is run with permission of the publisher.
 
#5
#5
Good read. :good!:

I might go out today and see if Books-A-Million has it in stock.
 
#6
#6
nice...I've never read the book...but I definitely want to get it now. Thanks Nocch
 
#7
#7
Wow, that's weird. I played against two of the guys and Coach Pemberton, AND Coach Freeze.

Good read.
 

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