Meat Market focuses on one recruiting season for the University of Mississippi’s football program. Under the guidance of head coach (and former recruiting guru) Ed Orgeron, the Ole Miss program is expected to land top ten classes, then eventually top ten regular-season rankings. In the recruiting world, that year (2007) seemed like something imagined by Ionesco, fore-grounded by Jimmy Clausen’s stretch Hummer limousine and four national titles in South Bend.
A regular ESPN contributor, Bruce Feldman writes in the style of the fifteen-minute Sportscenter segment: clearly composed, well-researched, superficial. There are no shocking revelations, even if the exact methods of circumventing NCAA rules make some fans uncomfortable. More disappointingly, Feldman does not analyze (question?) some of the presumptions in recruiting circles, as Michael Lewis (and Billy Beane) did in Moneyball.
Most fans will find the process of evaluating high school prospects informative. How does one 320-lb. defensive tackle grade out as five-star, while this one grades out as two-star? The frequent accuracy of professional scouting is undeniable, but greater insight into the trade might have been given by a different author. As I suggested earlier, at USC, Orgeron gained a reputation for finding “creative” ways to enroll players with questionable GPAs. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with it; once a player enrolls however, they should pursue a credible course of study.
The most interesting passages of the book, aside from the outrageous second-hand accounts of Orgeron’s locker-room antics, are the exchanges between the head coach and his recruiting/coaching staff. One recruiter brags that he will be able to land the most coveted running back in the country (He doesn’t). A different recruiter slowly finds himself on thin ice after failing to land one targeted player, after another. Between reviewing their targeted prospects, Orgeron and his staff will watch in a tape of the very best 18-year-old prospects (which are beyond his reach), which leaves the room of adult men salivating.
The 2007 recruiting cycle was the last Orgeron engineered as head coach. (He is now recruiting coordinator and defensive line coach at Tennessee.) What Feldman suggests in the last chapter of his book (that Orgeron would need to win in 2007 to see the real fruition of his recruiting successes in 2008 and 2009) has been realized: Houston Nutt led Ole Miss to a preseason top five ranking. In an upset loss to Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina squad, I watched a defense stocked by Orgeron and his staff keep the Rebels in a close game by harassing Stephen Garcia for most of the game.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment