Meat Market

IrishCorey · Jan 2, 2008

Interesting book, check it out.

Florida fans should probably avoid this unless you want to read about Urban Meyer telling a top QB recruit that he was recruiting Tebow as a linebacker.

I'm really going to miss Coach O at Ole Miss. If he weren't a police blotter waiting to happen, I'd hope the Irish would sign his crazy ass. Maybe Rick Neuheisel will land him as DC if Walker joins 'Team Titanic' up in Washington.

Gator Bill · Jan 2, 2008

When I get to our library I want to see if they have a copy.

IrishCorey · Jan 2, 2008

here

<r>is a Q and A with the author of the book that was posted on CBS sports: 

<QUOTE><s>

</s>ClayNation: Hitting 'Meat Market' with Feldman, Coach O 
 
Nov. 21, 2007 
By Clay Travis 
SPiN Columnist 
Tell Clay your opinion! 
 
More than a year ago, I jokingly announced the formation of the ClayNation book club when I reviewed Terrell Owens' masterpiece Little T Learns to Share. Then for the next year I didn't review any books. This is what we call commitment. But all of that is changing today because I return, one year after heralding its arrival to offer a new book review and bonus interview. This time a serious offering: Bruce Feldman's Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting. 
 
Feldman has covered college football for 10 years. His most recent book, Meat Market, focuses on a season inside Ole Miss's recruiting machine, profiles the coaches and administrators involved in the recruiting process, introduces us to the high school athletes being recruited and features a deft and compelling portrait of the South's most famous crazy man since Huey Long, Ed Orgeron. 
 
Feldman's book is gripping, the characters are well-defined, and I dare you to not keep turning the pages. If you're anything like me you're a bona fide recruiting junkie who lies to friends and family about how much time you spend on the Internet waiting to hear whether a 17- or 18-year-old boy is going to be playing for your college. Guess what? This book offers you a way to impress your wife or girlfriend by reading and you get to learn more about recruiting. See, everybody wins. 
 
Meat Market also offers a better behind the scenes view of what actually happens in the recruiting universe than exists anywhere else I've seen. So if you trust my opinion on books and you're a college football fan, you need to read this -- if for no other reason than to read about Orgeron attending a cockfight and to hear how Urban Meyer told Jevan Snead that he was recruiting Tim Tebow as a linebacker. Seriously, a linebacker. 
 
After I finished the book, I contacted Bruce Feldman. He told me he was thrilled to be the inaugural ClayNation book club author (not counting T.O.) His exact words were, "Does it come with some honorary jean shorts?" 
 
On to the interview: 
 
1. How well do you think the average fan understands the hours, commitment, focus and time that college coaches put into recruiting? 
"I don't think most fans have any idea about the time and energy that goes into coaching a big-time college football program. I know until I spent the year inside a program I had no idea just how rigorous the whole deal can be. You have 100 players to handle, not just on the field but also making sure they are doing well in school and not getting in trouble. You have daily practices to run and opponents to prepare for as well as recruiting boards to tend to; staff meetings and assistants to manage, you also have to deal with the media and boosters too. As a college writer, I never really thought about that after a post-practice interview session at say 6:45 p.m. that many staffs then sit down together -- offensive coaches in their room and defensive coaches in theirs -- and review the tape of the entire afternoon practice, which usually takes another three hours." 
 
2. In your experience what makes a truly great college recruiter? 
"I think the key to being a great recruiter is really three-fold: You have to be able to connect with kids and their parents and get their trust, you have to be a shrewd evaluator of what makes a prospect good or not good, and you have to be persistent. Many recruits are drawn to the coaches they feel want them the most. Ego plays a huge role in all of this. 
 
"The thing that makes Orgeron a great recruiter is the same thing that I think works for Zook. As rough around the edges as those guys might seem -- and if you were to round up all 120 head coaches for a battle royale, you know these are the last two in the cage -- they don't try to be something they're not. Many other head coaches seem to turn it on and turn it off depending on their situation. A lot of recruits I spoke to can see through the phoniness, and with Orgeron and Zook, those guys don't have that. And I think kids, especially ones from rough backgrounds, connect with them. Plus it helps when you can say you coached Warren Sapp and recruited Reggie Bush and a bunch of other All-Americans." 
 
3. You've covered college football for quite a few years so you weren't coming to this business completely anew, even with the knowledge you already had, what surprised you the most about the recruiting business? 
"The two things that surprised me the most were how murky the information is about the recruits. Meaning what you might see online is not what the coaches actually are dealing with, so that kid you've read as 6-4, 225 and runs a 4.6 40 and says he has a 2.6 GPA actually is 6-2, 208 and runs a 4.91 at your summer camp, and when his transcript shows up, you find out he actually has a 1.8 GPA in his core classes and he might not have much shot of qualifying. 
 
"The other thing that I never really grasped till now is you can have a player with all of the supposed "measureables," yet if he's not sharp enough to learn your system or isn't tough or can't change direction, he probably won't get off your bench." 
 
4. How many actual days did you spend in Oxford observing the recruiting chase? We know the coaches' hours were insane, what were your own like? 
"I'd say I spent a third of the year in Oxford and leading up to signing day I spent 17 days straight at the Hampton Inn in Oxford. As for the hours, he'd (Orgeron) be in the war room watching film usually by 5:30 a.m., so I tried to be there at the same time and he wouldn't leave the complex till 10 p.m. most nights. It was pretty mind-numbing for me because you're trying to absorb everything. Even though a big portion of his day was not specifically on recruiting (maybe it was getting ready for the day's practice or scouting tendencies for the upcoming week's opponent) I wanted to stay up with them because I figured it all related to their efforts to putting together a recruiting class because it would still be part of what goes into a coach's job." 
 
5. Did you ever in your wildest dreams think you'd be watching a cock fight in a recruit's back yard with Coach O? 
"Nope. Can't say that I would've." 
 
6. Were there any kids from the recruiting trail that you met and you find yourself really rooting for today? Why that kid in particular? 
"Yeah, there are a bunch of them. I liked Ian Williams, the lineman from Florida who ended up at Notre Dame. He told me he was all set to commit to Florida and then they backed off him and, man, is that humiliating for a kid. I really liked Rishaw Johnson, an offensive lineman from Louisiana who had such a heart-breaking story and is now at Ole Miss. One of my favorite kids was Darius Young, a receiver from Mississippi, who made a ton of plays but didn't run a good 40 time and then got injured at Ole Miss' summer camp. He is now in junior college. And of course, I'm fascinated to see what becomes of Joe McKnight at USC, Stephen Garcia at South Carolina and Robert Marve at Miami." 
 
7. Follow-up, did you go on these in-house visits with Orgeron and his staff? If so, how did you spend your time while the pitch was going on? Were you trying to be as unobtrusive as possible? 
"Due to the NCAA rules, I wasn't allowed actually in the home visits. I took one trip with the staff about a week before signing day. We flew from Memphis to the Mississippi Gulf where there was the state coaches convention at a casino, and from there Orgeron drove to Louisiana to see Rishaw Johnson. He came back that same night and then the next day we flew on a private plane to Alabama to see Justin Sanders, where the infamous cock fight occurred." 
 
8. In the book you talk an awful lot about the degree to which coaches monitor the Internet to see what kids are visiting, saying or doing in regards to other programs. How has the Internet changed the recruiting game, and did the degree to which they paid attention to this surprise you? 
"The Internet has made an enormous difference in recruiting. More kids are getting seen by more people, and with that, there is so much more information and misinformation out there. The downside is that it really has made celebrities out of many recruits who just simply aren't ready to handle the attention and you get kids with a really inflated sense of worth. And because of that attention now many boosters and fans are trying to get to those kids, and so it's a messy situation. 
 
"From the coaches' perspective, they were always looking to know what 'the buzz' was on a kid. Many coaches say they don't pay attention to what is being said on the Web, but Orgeron wasn't shy about stuff like that. He wants to know what a recruit is telling people and to hear who else is trying to talk to the kid. On the other hand, they don't take the evaluations very seriously, in that if a site says a kid is a four-star or a five-star, that doesn't mean they're ready to offer him." 
 
9. Did Urban Meyer really tell Jevan Snead that he was recruiting Tim Tebow as a linebacker? How is Snead liking Ole Miss? 
"Yeah. Snead had never really explained what had turned him off to UF before he re-opened his commitment and then when I spoke with his high school coach, he explained the situation to me. At that point he didn't feel like he could trust Urban Meyer. "I think he likes it a lot. He's a small town guy by nature and Oxford is a charming small town. Plus, he sees that Ole Miss does have a lot of good young receivers in the program." 
 
10. Ed Orgeron comes across as a fairly positive character in your book. Granted as a Red Bull drinking pork rind shoveling mad man, but even still as a pretty good guy. So do his assistant coaches and Ole Miss's support staff. How hard was it or is it now that you've written this book for you to watch Ole Miss without rooting for his team and coaching staff? 
"It's hard. You spend a year or two around people and you'll either like them or dislike them, and I came to respect how hard they work and how tough it is to turn around a program. I was at their game against Alabama and saw what seemed like a blown call that probably cost them the game. It would've been a signature win and the kind of win they've been chasing for three years, and then the refs reverse the call. Instead of a big confidence booster, it's a punch in the gut. In the locker room after the game I heard how Orgeron talked to the team and how bad he felt for them and then 30 minutes later outside the stadium I was chatting with one of the coaches' wives and she was saying how even though she knows the fans respect how hard the team played, she couldn't help but think how, 'this is the Bible Belt and some people will reason, well, maybe this just isn't meant to be.'" 
 
11. Is there any way for a grown man to attempt to seduce a 17-year-old boy to come play football at his program and not sell his soul to the devil in the process? 
"Not really. Because if you don't, the kid or his family will probably think you don't want him bad enough. They want to be wooed, and they will be because someone else is probably already doing it." 
 
12. What story or anecdote didn't end up in the book but was the hardest for you to cut? 
"There is a story about a blue-chip recruit who claims he was walking near a team in their game-day tradition as it was going through a group of fans at a certain SEC school and he feels all these people smacking him on the back. Then he feels someone swat him on the hip, and he gets weirded out a bit. He reaches into his pocket and finds a wad of cash for $1,100. The odd part is he didn't sign with that school. He signed with another SEC powerhouse. Legally, though, we just couldn't go with it." 
 
13. Let's say you have a son who is a phenomenal athlete and is being recruited by colleges all over the country. Where would you like to see him end up and why? 
"Texas has everything. I think that would be a great starting point. I really like Chapel Hill as a college town, but right now the football team isn't great, so I'll stick with Texas." 
 
14. What do you know about Coach O that would surprise college football fans? Favorite television show, favorite magazine, you tell us, something that we wouldn't anticipate? 
"He watches Desperate Housewives." 
 
15. Do you have any idea how it came to pass that Coach O was photographed holding a football while sitting at Faulkner's typewriter? 
"Wright Thompson, writer/Oxford resident, wanted something to juxtapose the worlds of SEC football and Southern culture and set it up. He said the curator loved Orgeron and that he asked all the right questions, most notably what made Faulkner so special, which led the curator to respond Faulkner was 'the Knute Rockne of writers.'" 
 
16. True or false, you have ridden around in the Hummer and slept in Coach O's house. 
"True. The night before signing day 2006, I wanted to see what he goes through the night before. We left the office late that night, and we were only going to get two or three hours of sleep. I slept in a bunk bed big enough for a 10-year-old. I was afraid to roll over because I thought I was going to break the bed. I barely fell asleep when I heard him bang on the door. 'LET'S GO! You can shower when we get to the office.' 
 
"For the whole reporting process I felt like I was undercover in that I worried so much that at some point, they'd shut down my access, but thankfully it never happened." 
 
17. At any point did Coach O offer you some of the pork rinds he always seemed to be eating? If so, what was your response? 
"He knew I really tried to watch what I eat, but one morning he and Johnny Majors are in the office eating fried chicken on a stick. It's the first time in 15 years I haven't picked off the skin. I started to and I felt Coach Majors looking at me like I just took off my socks and broke out some toenail clippers or something. Gotta admit chicken on a stick is outstanding. I think I gained 10 pounds while working on the book between BBQ and sweet tea." <e>
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Gator Bill · Jan 2, 2008

Sounds like an interesting book. I'd be interested to hear Meyer's side of the Tebow at linebacker comment. The whole world knew this kid was going to be a outstanding QB in college.

I'm going to snoop around GatorCountry and see if I can get any background.

I don't feel like buying a book right now but might check Amazon and see if that changes my mind.

Gator Bill · Jan 2, 2008

Corey, I posted the part about Snead on the Insider Recruiting on GatorCountry and asked for any insight.

First several people have read the book and all of them recommend it.

As to the comment about Snead no one really believes the comment was made in anything but jest. First Tebow and Snead attended several camps together including the elite 11 where I think Tebow was voted some kind of recognition, then they also attended some UF function together also.

Most of them feel like I do that if the remark was made it was probably in some kind of jest, otherwise like someone said if it was said seriously Snead should have fallen on the floor laughing, which was kind of my thought.

A couple thought that Snead wanted assurance he would be the only QB recruited that year which of course he was not. He then transfered to Texas where when he was beaten out by Colt McCoy transfered to Ole Miss. Where I think there's a good chance he does win the job.

However he was not likely to win the job at Florida and did not win the job at Texas.

I'm skeptical but feel like the one poster stated above, if that was said the whole Snead family should have died laughing.

If anything more significant comes up I'll let you know.

IrishCorey · Jan 2, 2008

well

<r>believe what you want.. I'd recommend reading the book first <E></E></r>

Gator Bill · Jan 2, 2008

I intend to get the book and read it Corey, I just don't know when and how since I'm laid up here for 3 months.

I'll have to say this about Snead though, if Meyer did make that remark and Snead and his family bought it then I have to think anyone that would swallow that would also line up to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. He's better off at Ole Miss than at Florida.

Terry O'Keefe · Jan 3, 2008

Corey if you want to send Bill a copy I have his address, I'm sure he'll appreciate it!! 8) 8) 8)

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