He’s got stories. All the stories.
Merci Falaise knows the hype of being a blue-chip recruit and how quickly it changes due to unforeseen circumstance --- in his case, an horrific injury.
Understands the world of recruiting, from both prospect and coach viewpoints, in such a short time it lends wisdom beyond his youthful appearance.
Owns the humility to gladly wedge his 6-foot-5 frame not into a private jet but into a minivan and a compact car to amass a star-studded recruiting class, only to also need to paint the field for said recruiting class in junior college as an assistant coach in middle-of-nowhere Kansas.
“It was the same injury as Bo Jackson,” Falaise explains to VolQuest.com. “I actually did it in high school. My junior year of high school, and I actually just saw (an retrospective ranking) that came out today, but I started off as like a top-200 recruit and did the same injury as Bo Jackson did. So I saw my recruitment go from being able to go anywhere in the country to having smaller-level D-1s. I ended up choosing the JuCo (junior college) route. Went to Georgia Military for a couple years. Did OK there, and coming out I chose to go to N.C. State.
“Even with now, whatever needs to be done, I don’t have a problem; I feel like I’m a very humble person. Being that I coached on lower levels, coached at junior college level and the high school level, I’ve done pretty much everything. I’ve painted fields, washed practice jerseys. I’ve done pretty much anything like drove to games. Whatever may arise, I don’t have a problem doing it.”
So Falaise now tells the stories of Tennessee Football through the lenses of its top two social media accounts, Instagram and Twitter. His impact with a more recruiting-based theme is undeniable: followers are up approximately 12,000 on each account, to 162k and 273k, respectively.
“First thing with Merci is, shoot, even when he first got here, he had interest in recruiting,” says UT’s indispensable Bob Welton. “He always had ideas, was really into it. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with him and he approached us about he’d really like to get into recruiting and I said I think there’s a spot for you. We hadn’t done much with [social media] from a recruiting standpoint. There was a spot, and he was a perfect fit.
“We basically said let’s try you for a month and see how you like it and after a week, we said, ‘Yeah, this is a good thing.’ All our views and followers are up, and he has a good feel for what’s current. Music, shoes, TV shows, he seems to be always a step ahead. He’s very, very good at that kind of thing.”
Right now, Falaise has the Vols’ social media followers and recruits taking note of the school’s new Drake-themed #Views video that features Alvin Kamara sitting atop the Neyland Stadium press box and owns nearly 6,000 combined likes plus nearly 1,000 retweets just since Friday.
“The first one I ever did was the summer workout video. And the people that help with all that, Trevor Greene down in VFL Films just does a great job,” says the former N.C. State left tackle Falaise, who also praises UT photographers Donald Page and Craig Bisacre. “Drake has the new album and two or three weeks ago, I was like, ‘We should do a video on it’ because Drake’s my favorite artist. A lot of times people do the album covers, and I was like, ‘Let’s do a video.’ And it was great. Trevor did everything. We got Alvin to come over and sit on top of the press box of the stadium. Also, Jonathan King does a great job, graphics, photos, anything you could want. Anything that needs to be done, those guys do a great job helping me out.”
Turns out, though, that Kamara’s starring role in the sublimely executed 16-second video comes on the heels of an assumed passing of the script by head man Butch Jones.
“Actually, I was going to get Coach first,” Falaise explains. “But Coach has a pretty busy schedule, and I know Coach probably wouldn’t have been too willing to get up there. But I think it’s pretty cool when people see it and get what’s going on.”
Tennessee’s current players are buying into helping Falaise present the program’s digital vision. Kamara stars in this video, among others, and Cam Sutton also is a previous star.
“All the players do a great job with anything I ask of them,” says Falaise, who once drove 10,000 miles during two months and signed 19 players from his native Georgia to Garden City Community College. “That’s another good thing I have, because I’ve worked with them the past two years, so anything I ask of them, they do. It’s not hard at all.
“Alvin, JRM (Jalen Reeves-Maybin), (Darrin) Kirkland, all of them; Cam (Sutton), I followed Cam around to class one day and he was cool with it. All those guys have no problem with anything I ask. They enjoy it and I enjoy it.”
Welton knows his week today will begin like the rest since Falaise’s ascension into the role.
“The thing about Merci is that he’s a self-starter. He’ll come to you with ideas versus you going and saying, ‘Hey, I need this. He’ll walk in my office with three or four ideas for the week,” Welton explains, “and I’ll say yes or no. I think the coaches like him from the aspect that they’ll say, ‘Hey, Merci, this is who I’m recruiting and what he likes, what can we do?’ And really, he’s doing that all by himself. He has a lot of help with Trevor Greene and Jonathan King, but the ideas he’s kind of on his own and some places have four or five people.
“I think the best thing about Merci is that he’s extremely humble, he’s very unassuming but yet he gets the job done.”
Falaise sees it as part of the common mission of Tennessee football, which starts with Jones and trickles to the players.
“Coach Jones is great, he’s always wanting new ideas,” Falaise says. “[The culture] I think that’s a big, big part of it. A lot of those guys, they had opportunity to move on to the next level and chose to come back here.
“That’s a testament to what we’re doing here and how the program is on the up and going where it needs to go.”
The goal? Find the views that are best. From the top.
