Orgeron: 'If he comes to Oxford, we'll change the bricks on Manning Way'
In his latest book, "Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting," Bruce Feldman chronicled the year-long recruiting process at Ole Miss that culminated with last February's National Letter-of-Intent Day. The following is an excerpt from the book.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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