Bruce Feldman's career in journalism has taken him many places, but it's the prize-winning writer's behind-the-scenes looks at college football -- particularly his gritty tome "Meat Market" -- for which he has gained most acclaim.

Feldman had what every fan of college football craves -- an up-close view of big-time college football, with unprecedented access into Ed Orgeron's University of Mississippi program.

In this exclusive question-and-answer session with Feldman, we discuss the genesis of the book, Feldman peels away some layers of Orgeron and we even were granted permission to use an excerpt from the book.

Feldman: Well, there was a couple of reasons. First, you had a guy who learned under Jimmy Johnson and was with Pete Carroll and had this big reputation from what they had done at USC. When Carroll took over, Orgeron was really the main holdover. He had gotten a big commitment from Shaun Cody, who was the national defensive player of the year. Then he had this big presence about him. I think to carry a book you need a guy who is just really almost a larger than life character. I knew he had a lot of energy and was passionate about recruiting. This wasn't a guy who was delegating everything. So from that standpoint, I thought he was ideal. The other part which I really didn't honestly think through as much and was fortunate because I got lucky in this regard, because he was at a school that wasn't Texas or a USC or wasn't a Florida, Georgia, Tennessee or LSU, he wasn't at an elite program, I think you got to see the peaks and the valleys more. He was really recruiting a lot of times uphill battles because he was at Ole Miss. So you had a guy who was really passionate about recruiting and he was at a place where he really had to be a salesman because you know a lot of times you are going up against a schools that, once an LSU or Tennessee chimes in, most kids are going to be leaning that way opposed to an Ole Miss, which is not a top 25 team all the time.

Feldman: I followed it pretty closely. I probably look at the Rivals sites maybe a half-dozen times a day. I was always fascinated by it much in the same way you probably have a lot of your readers, where it is almost their version of fantasy sports. You are fascinated to see who is doing what and who is in on this kid. I think from the time when I was a student working at the Miami Herald, it was on my radar. As to my level of my understanding of recruiting, I think so much has changed the last five years or so with the Internet. I didn't know the depths of the transcripts and the academics and a lot of the particulars with recruits that went on behind the scenes. I didn't know the depths of that. I didn't know just what the dead period entailed. I didn't know the premium that was placed on getting a kid to camp. I assumed that a list would go from 1,000 names to the 25 guy you sign, but I didn't really know all that went in to the pecking order and slotting. I knew about it generally but in terms of the detail, it blew me away with some of the things that I observed.

Feldman: This project actually started years and years ago with Kentucky and Hal Mumme for a magazine article. I started working on it as a magazine story, but that was the same year Kentucky went on probation and I never got to see it through. I tried to do it at N.C. State with Chuck Amato and that didn't work out. I didn't know if I would ever find the right person for it to work out. I was down at the coaches convention in Dallas and I was with a buddy and another guy and we run into Orgeron and we end up going to dinner with him and just in the process of riding to dinner with him, I was like, 'This guy is such a character. I have to tell someone at ESPN that they have to do a reality show on him.' Then during the course of dinner, I was like, 'Wait a minute, here is my recruiting guy.' I asked if I could come down and check things out and within the first 30 minutes that I was there on the day before signing day, I was blown away with how comfortable he was talking about what he does. He is so confident in how hard he works and how passionate he is about this that he wasn't afraid to let someone inside of it. I was stunned with how open he was. I basically came and went as I pleased. There were times where I was sitting in the war room and a guy was getting yelled at a little bit. I was the one guy in there who wasn't on staff and you don't want to be seen writing notes because that's a little embarrassing for that particular guy who screwed up. I would end up typing stuff into my blackberry. He was always good about it. It worked out better than I ever thought it would.

Feldman: I will give you an example: we went down to Biloxi. I got with him. We drove to the airport and flew down there. Then we went to Huntsville for a home visit and then somewhere else and I just kept thinking how hectic of a pace this was. There are so many ups and downs and so many different things that you have to keep a perspective about. It was training just to be around for the 36 hours of that trip. I have a great admiration for coaches in general who go through that process because you have so much invested in those guys.

Feldman: I think the biggest thing with him and in the book you see how much time he spends evaluating film. I think it is huge for him to watch as much as he can because that is the way he get the truest pecking order on his board. I think there was definitely some surprise and I saw this when I was there (at Tennessee), he was talking to some of the film guys and he had this printed out sheet of all these high schools where these kids he wants to target are and he asks, 'Do we have game film of this and game film of that?'. I think that a lot of him is organization. For all the YouTube commercial, big blustery guy that he is, he is really a stickler about organization and accountability. He had a guy at Ole Miss who learned how to put things together the way he wanted. I think that some of that film system is not where he needs it to be and I think that is a starting point for him. I think he was very surprised that a lot of things weren't already there and he was scratching his head about some of that stuff.

Feldman: That was big. Some of this I thought may have played into being at Ole Miss. One of his assistants had been at Ole Miss since Tommy Tuberville and he made a point of saying that David Cutcliffe wasn't really concerned about being the first one out there. Orgeron really had no qualms about being the first in the water so to speak. He thought, 'You know what, I feel very comfortable in my ability to evaluate players and I don't care if no one has offered this kid. In fact if we are the first ones to offer him, great, because maybe that kid will say that Ole Miss and Ed Orgeron was the first one to believe in me. Maybe it will help build the relationship.' It certainly didn't hurt. There are a bunch of kids in this class that I remember seeing two years down there. Joe McKnight was a guy that his running backs coach (Frank Wilson) had targeted pretty much before anyone else. He targeted him from the time he was a sophomore. When I was at Tennessee last week, they were looking at sophomores. I think there was a freshman that they actually had on the radar as well. It's a big part of him to get out there early. He is very confident in his ability to evaluate players. I think going out there first is a big part of trying to play the loyalty card.

Feldman: I remember there was a kid, Ian Williams, who is now at Notre Dame, who came on his visit. He liked the staff and was comfortable around the team. You go to the game and it's 52,000 fans at the game. It's a cool atmosphere around 'The Grove.' But just the idea of walking into that stadium with over 100,000 fans and the tradition there. There is no comparison between the two in that regard. Ole Miss has nice facilities, but you are talking about Tennessee, you are not busing 6 hours to an away game. In some ways, I think Ole Miss, partly from the athletic director, is almost run like a Sun Belt Conference school, whereas I think you are talking about Tennessee and the financial commitment they have made to the staff, but also just in terms of what the program is. It's a heavyweight program and I think that fact gets you in the homes with guys. Orgeron had a ton of success at Ole Miss with a guy like Dexter McCluster who was a three-star guy or a Greg Hardy who was a three-star guy. A lot of those guys who he did well with were under the radar guys and I think now you can still get some of those guys, but you can also go after the big heavyweight recruit as well.

Feldman: There was really a couple. I got such an adrenaline rush leading up to signing day. It was really amazing to see. They had one coach, Hugh Freeze, who had recruited Memphis and had three different soap operas going the night before signing day. It was crazy to see it unfold. This was almost funny to me. It was a few weeks before signing day and we get in his Hummer. It's just me and Orgeron and we were meeting a couple other coaches at the Memphis airport. We get about 10 minutes outside of Oxford and we stop off at a convenient store and he asked me if I want a Red Bull and I said, 'No, just get me a Gatorade.' So he gets a four pack of Red Bull, a bag of mixed nuts and some pork rinds. He is flying on the way to the airport and by the time we get there and it's not even an hour and he had knocked off a four pack of Red Bull, which blows my mind. So we fly out, we picked up a rental car and go to this hotel in Biloxi and the next morning we have to drive back. I glance down and I see the empty four pack of Red Bull then it dawned on me that we are in a rental car. I realized that in course of 24 hours I know he has killed at least 8 Red Bulls and hasn't even thought about it. I have never seen anyone who can sustain this pace and have this kind of energy.

One thing I would say was is that I got this question a lot last year and that is do you think he will come back to college football and I said I would be shocked if he wasn't back in a year. The whole thing about recruiting with him is that it is so much a part of his identity. I have talked to other coaches who have worked with him and they say it is really different with him. No one is that passionate about it. It's really an adrenaline rush to be around him. I think there are a lot of guys who are built as great recruiters because they have landed a great player here or there and are relationship guys. But just in terms of being wired for the evaluations, being wired for the chase and everything else ... we are in this little airport in Gulfport, Miss., it's like the size of a doctor's office and there is one open computer terminal while we are waiting on something and he is going online looking at the Rivals site just to see if there are any updates on two kids he was looking at. He is a recruiting junkie.

Spring Cleaning

At 5:27 a.m. on Monday, May 22, 2006, Ed Orgeron's black Hummer was already parked in the first space next to the Ole Miss football offices. Inside the Rebels' war room, Orgeron sat alone at the big table, jotting down notes on a yellow legal pad, prepping for an 8 o'clock recruiting meeting with his staff.

"Man, it is gonna be a great day!" Orgeron shouted, leaning way back in his chair and stretching his arms above his head. He seemed way more fired up than any person in his right mind could possibly be this long before dawn on a sticky-hot Mississippi morning. He and his staff had been out on the recruiting trail the past month—officially, the Spring Evaluation Period—and this was the first time everybody would come together as a group to share findings.

Obviously, the thought of sitting down with his people and swapping stories about prospects was making Orgeron downright giddy.

Most head coaches, including Orgeron's predecessor. David Cutcliffe, spend a big chunk of the annual four-week evaluation period working the booster circuit or polishing up their short games, leaving most of the actual scouting to their assistants. Not Orgeron. A makeshift calendar on a dry erase board on the other side of the war room showed that he'd been on the road scouting talent every single day, save for the Sundays the NCAA puts off limits.

In Week 1, he'd started in northern Mississippi and worked his way throughout the state in a five-day trek that covered over 1,800 miles and included 21 stops. Orgeron then went to New Orleans and Miami to conclude a hectic opening week.

By the start of Week 2, on May 1, Orgeron was back in Mississippi, before making stops in Tennessee, Mobile, Atlanta, and Arkansas, then returning to Mississippi to wrap up the week by speaking at a clinic and getting more face time with high school coaches.

Weeks 3 and 4 were spent in Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida.

"It was awesome," he said. "Friggin' awe-some!"

Saying that Ed Orgeron loves the chase is like saying that the Mississippi River is wet. The chase for talent feeds his lust for competition. And though he didn't say so right out, you got the feeling he was even more wired about recruiting now, as an underdog, than he had been in the glow of USC's dominance.

A clear, early sign of Orgeron's passion for the chase came in the pre-Pete Carroll era at USC. Back in 2000, after USC fired head coach Paul Hackett, Orgeron continued to recruit even though the Trojans program was leaderless. One day, Orgeron showed up a local high school at the same time as UCLA assistant Gary Bernardi. "What the fuck is he doing here?" Bernardi asked a high school coach within earshot of Orgeron. "He doesn't even have a fuckin' job." Orgeron wanted to tear Bernardi's head off, but instead he just gritted his teeth. A few days later, after he was hired as the new Trojans head coach, Carroll named Orgeron his recruiting coordinator and asked him which area he wanted to recruit personally.

"I want Bernardi," Orgeron answered.

Orgeron wanted to recruit the San Fernando and Santa Clarita schools, traditionally UCLA strongholds, just so he could go head-to-head with Bernardi. And from that day on, Bernardi never beat Orgeron for single player. Two years later, UCLA canned Bernardi.

In Orgeron's mind, every school visit to scout a prospect was game day against the rest of college football. He believed with all his heart—and still does—that he could outwork, outcharm, and outsmart the competition. The keys, he always said, were preparation and mind-set—the same as with a football game.

"It's all about com-pe-tin'!" might as well be tattooed on his chest. During an impromptu 10-minute dissertation after the spring evaluation on how to work the road, Orgeron used the word "compete" eight times. On his final recruiting foray, to a high school football jamboree capped by two two-quarter games, he and receivers coach Matt Lubick outlasted Florida State assistant Kevin Steele and were the last to leave the field. They jawed with high school coaches until 11:30 p.m. "They'd already turned the sprinklers on," Orgeron said proudly.

Orgeron hoped that his passion for recruiting had rubbed off on his staff. He even held a contest for his assistants: Whoever came back with the most visitor passes from high schools won $100. Defensive line coach Ryan Nielsen, the winner of Orgeron's one-day recruiting derby back in the winter, again snagged first place by averaging 10 schools per day.

The Rebels' road map for the spring evaluation period covered 13 states, with each coach following a tightly programmed itinerary. For instance, the 27-year-old Nielsen, a former defensive lineman for Orgeron at USC, was the Rebels' primary recruiter in California. Aside from his one-day trip with Orgeron to Georgia—in large part to see prized defensive tackle prospect Ted Laurent—Nielsen spent all of his road time in the Golden State. Meanwhile, Werner was in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, following the combine circuit where he studied quarterbacks.

While on the surface it might seem inefficient to double up as the Rebels did whenever Orgeron accompanied one of his assistants on the road, it was valuable to have that second set of eyes at scrimmages and combines, where so many things are going on at once. Orgeron also felt that since he was going to have the ultimate say in whether Ole Miss chased a prospect, he needed to eyeball as many of them as possible.

Typically, college programs use the monthlong evaluation process to identify the players they want to pursue for their next recruiting class. In the Rebels' case, it was more of an opportunity to get updates on many of the prospects they'd already targeted for the 2007 class. "I felt like when I walked into a school, it was November," Orgeron said with pride, referring to how far ahead of schedule he believed the Rebels were with regard to National Signing Day on February 7, 2007.

Orgeron's plan to get ahead of his competitors this spring included a new twist for the college scouting circuit: camcorders. Orgeron was looking for a way for his whole staff to see and study as a group what each coach saw while on the road. One of his assistants had told him that he'd noticed an assistant using a camera on the road, and Orgeron's interest had been piqued. After checking with the Ole Miss compliance office to make sure filming prospects was permissible under NCAA rules, Orgeron had the Rebels' video coordinator go to the local Wal-Mart and buy eight camcorders.

A few of the assistant coaches weren't too keen on the idea of adding cameraman to their scouting duties, but Orgeron had obviously convinced himself that video evidence would help fine-tune the evaluation process, so they kept their reservations to themselves.

"It was an, uh, interesting idea," Lubick said. "But it worked out great."

Seeing coaches in Ole Miss garb at high school spring football practices with camcorders drew some puzzled looks from rival assistants. "Most coaches thought we were filming to nab cheaters," Orgeron said. "But this was going to give us a big-time advantage."

Orgeron joked that he would be handing out an Oscar to the assistant who came back with the best film: "That's what they give out, right?"

The Rebels' four-person video staff had spent much of the previous two weeks working on the collection of tape, editing out blurry video and random close-ups of elbows, pylons, and pretty women in the stands to get the film ready for this morning meeting.

The camcorder videotape had been added to the plays compiled on tapes from players' junior seasons. In most cases, this close-up footage would give the Rebels an almost- 3-D view of their prospects, focusing on position-specific movements.

Sitting proudly behind a stack of cassettes neatly aligned on the table in the war room, Orgeron could hardly contain himself as he grabbed the first tape. It was of Bradley Sowell, a mammoth 6'7", 350-pound offensive lineman from Hernando, Mississippi, about 60 miles north of Oxford. Sowell hadn't been highly touted by the Internet recruiting sites, but the Rebels were intrigued enough by his size and agility to offer him in the winter. Sowell, a lifelong Ole Miss fan, reported to Rebelsports.net in February that it took all of 10 seconds for him to commit.

Like most offensive linemen, Sowell was a long-range project. He probably needed to shed 35 pounds before he'd have a prayer of cracking the Rebels' two-deep depth chart. Offensive tackle is the position with the highest washout rate. Offensive line coach Art Kehoe had just left a Miami program with more than a half-dozen OL misfires still on scholarship.

Orgeron hoped he'd done the right thing in pulling the trigger on the young giant. In the back of his mind, he knew better than to jump early at local kids, especially ones who grew up attending all of the college's home games. You could throw out an early scholarship offer to some blue-chipper 2,000 miles away in California just to "get in the boat." But offering the local guy early meant you were offering to buy the boat.

As Orgeron popped in Sowell's tape, he looked for a second as if he might be feeling a touch of buyer's remorse. He took a gulp from the cup of coffee and pushed Play on the remote, then leaned forward in his chair as the camera framed a close up Hernando's spring drills.

"There he is, Big Bradley Sowell!" Orgeron bellowed.

The tape showed Sowell, alongside other offensive linemen on his team, lined up under a four-foot high cage during a blocking drill designed to teach the players to stay low while firing out of their stances toward the defenders. "Wooooo!" Orgeron yelped as Sowell uncoiled out of his stance, took a jab step to his left, then busted through the chute.

"That right there is one of the biggest human beings I've ever seen," Orgeron exclaimed to the room, "and just you wait 'til we get him down to 315. Look at dat big boy!"

Clips like this, of Sowell displaying not only toughness and tenacity but also uncanny flexibility for a man his size, would get any football coach in America excited. Orgeron, just more so. The clip had come from "Freeze-cam"—that is, it was filmed by tight ends coach Hugh Freeze, who had also brought back footage of other Hernando High spring football drills. Without the camcorder, Orgeron would've had to rely on Freeze's description. Thanks to the video, the whole staff could see what Freeze had seen.

Over the next hour, Orgeron buzzed through a dozen more tapes while polishing off another big coffee, a can of Red Bull, and a 16-ounce, caffeinated, chocolate-covered protein bar.

The videos featured an array of athletic maneuvers: Chris Walker, a blue-chip linebacker from Memphis, gliding around a basketball court, effortlessly flipping his hips and shuffling his feet doing defensive drills, and later showing off a variety of dunks as a little bonus … Mike Harris, an unheralded, 310-pound offensive lineman from Duarte, California, exhibiting surprising agility as he moved laterally with his hands held behind his back while walling off a teammate in a pass-rush drill … Gary McClellan, a 6'4", 315-pound defensive lineman from Arkadelphia, Arkansas, swiftly running circles around bags lined up on the ground.

Orgeron, devouring every frame, kept up a running commentary. He liked McClellan's quickness. He didn't like how McClellan came out of a three-point stance and leaned into a blocking sled. "He doesn't know how to work hard," Orgeron decided on the spot, adding that McClellan might make a better offensive guard than defensive tackle.

And then: "Man, I love this. It's just like having him at camp."

By 7:50, nearly the entire staff was assembled around the big table in the war room. Missing: Dan Werner and Art Kehoe, who had been recruiting in Florida and were now in Memphis for a Rebels booster gathering. Orgeron told his assistants that he'd already had a sneak preview of their camerawork and was ecstatic about what they'd brought back. "Everybody is going to have to start doing this," Orgeron beamed. "How do you like that, Coach Rippon?"

On the other side of the table, Chris Rippon, the Rebels' veteran secondary coach, arched his eyebrows and nodded his head. A more usual response to an Orgeron proclamation would have been "Sounds great, Coach." Rippon wasn't ready to give that to his boss this early.

"I bet every assistant coach in the country is hating your guts right now," Rippon said with a grin.

He was probably right. Rebels assistant AD for internal affairs Maurice Harris had already told Orgeron that University of Memphis offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner had said the Rebels were "invading kids' privacy."

"You tell Randy Fichtner that we're fixing to invade his backfield with Jerrell Powe," replied Orgeron, referring to the Rebels' blue-chip defensive tackle prospect who was awaiting clearance from the NCAA.

Orgeron wasn't going to admit that pissing off his rivals was a nice bonus of the camcorder experiment, but you could tell it wasn't exactly breaking his heart.

The recruiting meeting formally opened with Orgeron's leading his staff through their board reports. The nameplates of the recruits—categorized as Committed (orange), Offered (blue), and Prospects (green) and aligned in two columns, In-State and Out-of-State—had been updated to reflect current heights, weights, and 40-yard-dash times. Most of that data had come courtesy of the spring combines and camps conducted all over the country by recruiting websites. The Rebels put one asterisk next to info gleaned from a combine and two next to stats that had been gathered during Ole Miss' own summer camp.

Orgeron insisted that the board be frequently updated because the info would help him prioritize how hard the program should be chasing certain recruits. He repeatedly prodded his assistants to chime in with their thoughts, but as always, he did most of the talking. Virtually every prospect on the Ole Miss recruiting list got assessed over the next hour, some in greater detail than others.

First up: In-State Linebackers.

Linebacker hadn't been designated as one of the program's top five priorities in January. Back then those priorities had been, in descending order of greatest need, O-line, D-line, QB, Safety, and CB. But now, since watching the Rebels' spring practice, Orgeron had become worried. Ole Miss had returning All-America middle linebacker Patrick Willis, a senior; strong-side linebacker Garry Pack, a junior, who was struggling academically; and a motley crew of unproven underclassmen who hadn't impressed Orgeron this spring on or off the field. The Rebels were hoping for contributions from Rory Johnson, a speedy junior college weak-side linebacker, and Jonathan Cornell, an incoming freshman from California, whom they saw as a possible heir apparent to Willis at middle linebacker. But in Orgeron's mind, they were still only maybes.

The LB situation had started unraveling in March, when Stevan Ridley of Natchez, Mississippi, who had committed to Ole Miss in January, announced that he'd changed his mind and was going to LSU. Now, two months later, two of the three remaining LB recruits Orgeron had been counting on looked increasingly doubtful.

Chris Strong, a 6'2", 255-pounder from nearby Batesville, Mississippi: Already committed to the Rebels, Strong was the star of a high school juggernaut that hadn't lost a game in three years. Unfortunately, he was also a poor student and no sure thing to bring admitted to Ole Miss without first spending a year at a prep school or junior college. "This guy is a bona-damn-fide first-round pick!" Orgeron practically screamed. "Ho-ly shit! Big Chris can flat-ass get it! He's raw-dog tough! We can't let him go to no Hargrave Military Academy! We'll go to bat for him!"

Chris Donald, a 6'2", 220-pounder from Tennessee: "He's a great-looking player on film," Orgeron said. "Everybody in the world is after him. It's gonna be us and Tennessee." Back in January, Huge Freeze, the Rebels recruiter in Tennessee, said he thought he could land Donald, but now word was filtering through the grapevine that Donald was thinking it might be nice to spend his next four autumns in Knoxville. (Donald and a few other players from outside Mississippi were listed on the In-State board because either they had already committed to Ole Miss or they were from the Memphis area, which the Rebels believed was as good as home turf.)

Jonathan Frink, a 6'1", 220-pound honor student at Oxford High: Only Frink still appeared to be a mortal lock to sign with the Rebels. He was best friends with Rebels DB recruit Jamison Hughes, the son of Ole Miss cornerbacks coach Tony Hughes. The Rebels staff was familiar with Frink because Rippon and LB coach David Saunders had sons who played for Oxford High. "I love him, big time," Rippon said. "He knows plays before they happen." "I love his intangibles," Saunders added. "The only thing I wonder about is his pure speed." But Frink hadn't committed yet. What was he waiting for?

A few months before, Orgeron had figured Ole Miss would be signing three linebackers in the Class of 2007. Now he was thinking about upping it to five.

Orgeron nodded his head at the praise for Frink and pointed to the words "SIZE-SPEED RATIO," which were written in six-inch-high capital letters on the dry erase board beside the In-State Defense list. "Remember, that's our deal," he said. "The Florida guys are going to come in and tell us who they have, and we can be a little choosy."

The Florida guys were Kehoe and Werner, who'd been recruiting in the southern part of the state, and Lubick, who handled the northern half. Florida usually cranked out about 30 major college linebacker prospects a year, and with the ties Kehoe and Werner had brought from their days at Miami, Orgeron was hoping to cash in.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 2:07 AM, wrote:

Feldman: Well there was a couple of reasons. First you had a guy who learned under Jimmy Johnson and was with Pete Carroll and had this big reputation from what they had done at USC. When Carroll took over, Orgeron was really the main holdover. He had gotten a big commitment from Shaun Coady, who was the national defensive player of the year. Then he had this big presence about him. I think to carry a book you need a guy, who is just really almost a larger than life character. I knew he had a lot of energy and was passionate about recruiting. This wasn't a guy who was delegating everything. So from that standpoint, I thought he was ideal. The other part which I really didn't honestly think through as much and was fortunate because I got lucky in this regard, because he was at a school that was Texas or a USC or wasn't a Florida, Georgia, Tennessee or LSU, he wasn't at an elite program, I think you got to see the peaks and the valleys more. He was really recruiting a lot of times uphill battles because he was at Ole Miss. So you had a guy who was really passionate about recruiting and he was at a place where he really had to be a salesman because you know a lot of times you are going up against a schools, that once an LSU or Tennessee chimes in most kids are going to be leaning that way opposed to an Ole Miss which is not a top 25 team all the time.

Feldman: I followed it pretty closely. I probably look at the rivals sites maybe a half dozen times a day. I was always fascinated by it much in the same way you probably have a lot of your readers where it is almost their version of fantasy sports. You are fascinated to see who is doing what and who is in on this kid. I think from the time when I was a student working at the Miami Herald, it was on my radar. As to my level of my understanding of recruiting, I think so much has changed the last five years or so with the internet. I didn't know the depths of the transcripts and the academics and a lot of the particulars with recruits that went on behind the scenes. I didn't know the depths of that. I didn't know just what the dead period entailed. I didn't know the premium that was placed on getting a kid to camp. I assumed that a list would go from 1000 names to the 25 guy you sign, but I didn't really know all that went in to the pecking order and slotting. I knew about it generally but in terms of the detail, it blew me away with some of the things that I observed.

Feldman: This project actually started years and years ago with Kentucky and Hal Mumme for a magazine article. I started working on it as a magazine story, but that was the same year Kentucky went on probation and I never got to see it through. I tried to do it at NC State with Chuck Amato and that didn't work out. I didn't know if I would ever find the right person for it to work out. I was down at the coaches convention in Dallas and I was with a buddy and another guy and we run into Orgeron and we end up going to dinner with him and just in the process of riding to dinner with him, I was like this guy is such a character. I have to tell someone at ESPN that they have to do a reality show on him. Then during the course of dinner, I was like wait a minute, here is my recruiting guy. I asked if I could come down and check things out and within the first 30 minutes that I was there on the day before signing day, I was blown away with how comfortable he was talking about what he does. He is so confident in how hard he works and how passionate he is about this that he wasn't afraid to let someone inside of it. I was stunned with how open he was. I basically came and went as I pleased. There were times where I was sitting in the war room and a guy was getting yelled at a little bit. I was the one guy in there who wasn't on staff and you don't want to be seen writing notes because that's a little embarring for that particular guy who screwed up. I would end up typing stuff into my blackberry. He was always good about it. It worked out better than I ever thought it would.

Feldman: I will give you an example we went down to Biloxi. I got with him. We drove to the airport and flew down there. Then we went to Huntsville for a home visit and then somewhere else and I just kept thinking how hectic of a pace this was. There are so many up's and down's and so many different things that you have to keep a prospective about. It was training just to be around for the 36 hours of that trip. I have a great admiration for coaches in general who go through that process because you have so much invested in those guys.

Feldman: I think the biggest thing with him and in the book you see how much time he spends evaluating film. I think it is huge for him to watch as much as he can because that is the way he get the truest pecking order on his board. I think there was definitely some surprise and I saw this when I was there (at Tennessee), he was talking to some of the film guys and he had this printed out sheet of all these high schools where these kids he wants to target are and he asks do we have game film of this and game film of that. I think that a lot of him is organization. For all the youtube commercial big blustery guy that he is, he is really a stickler about organization and accountability. He had a guy at Ole Miss, who learned how to put things together the way he wanted. I think that some of that film system is not where he needs it to be and I think that is a starting point for him. I think he was very surprised that a lot of things weren't already there and he was scratching his head about some of that stuff.

Feldman: That was big. Some of this I thought may have played into being at Ole Miss. One of his assistants had been at Ole Miss since Tommy Tuberville and he made a point of saying that David Cutcliffe wasn't really concerned about being the first one out there. Orgeron really had no qualms about being the first in the water so to speak. He thought you know what I feel very comfortable in my ability to evaluate players and I don't care if no one has offered this kid. In fact if we are the first one's to offer him, great, because maybe that kid will say that Ole Miss and Ed Orgeron was the first one to believe in me. Maybe it will help build the relationship. It certainly didn't hurt. There are a bunch of kids in this class that I remember seeing two years down there. Joe McKnight was a guy that his running backs coach (Frank Wilson) had targeted pretty much before anyone else. He targeted him from the time he was a sophomore. When I was at Tennessee last week, they were looking at sophomores. I think there was a freshman that they actually had on the radar as well. It's big part of him to get out there early. He is very confident in his ability to evaluate players. I think going out there first is a big part of trying to play the loyalty card.

Feldman: I remember there was a kid, Ian Williams, who is now at Notre Dame, who came on his visit. He liked the staff and was comfortable around the team. You go to the game and it's 52-thousand fans at the game. It's a cool atmosphere around the grove. But just the idea of walking into that stadium with over 100-thousand fans and the tradition there. There is no comparison between the two in that regard. Ole Miss has nice facilities, but you are talking about Tennessee, you are not busing 6 hours to an away game. In some ways, I think Ole Miss partly from the athletic director is almost run like a Sun Belt conference school, whereas I think you are talking about Tennessee and the financial commitment they have made to the staff, but also just in terms of what the program is. It's a heavy weight program and I think that fact gets you in the homes with guys. Orgeron had a ton of success at Ole Miss with a guy like Dexter McClutchen who was a three star guy or a Greg Hardy who was a three star guy. A lot of those guys who he did well with were under the radar guys and I think now you can still get some of those guys, but you can also go after the big heavyweight recruit as well.

Feldman: There was really a couple. I got such an adrenaline rush leading up to signing day. It was really amazing to see. They had one coach Hugh Freeze, who had recruited Memphis had three different soap operas going the night before signing day. It was crazy to see it unfold. This was almost funny to me. It was a few weeks before signing day and we get in his Hummer. It's just me and Orgeron and we were meeting a couple other coaches at the Memphis airport. We get about 10 minutes outside of Oxford and we stop off at a convenient store and he asked me if I want a Red Bull and I said no just get me a Gatorade. So he gets a four pack of red bull, a bag of mixed nuts and some pork rinds. He is flying on the way to the airport and by the time we get there and it's not even an hour and he had knocked off a four pack of Red Bull which blows my mind. So we fly out, we picked up a rental car and go to this hotel in Biloxi and the next morning we have to drive back. I glance down and I see the empty four pack of Red Bull then it dawned on me that we are in a rental car. I realized that in course of 24 hours I know he has killed at least 8 Red Bull's and hasn't even thought about it. I have never seen anyone who can sustain this pace and have this kind of energy.

One thing I would say was is that I got this question a lot last year and that is do you think he will come back to college football and I said I would be shocked if he wasn't back in a year. The whole thing about recruiting with him is that it is so much a part of his identity. I have talked to other coaches who have worked with him and they say it is really different with him. No one is that passionate about it. It's really an adrenaline rush to be around him. I think there are a lot of guys who are built as great recruiters because they have landed a great player here or there and are relationship guys. But just in terms of being wired for the evaluations, being wired for the chase and everything else ... we are in this little airport in Gulfport, Mississippi. It's like the size of a doctors office and there is one open computer terminal while we are waiting on something and he is going on line looking at the Rivals site just to see if there are any updates on two kids he was looking at. He is a recruiting junkie.

Mike Patterson is one of his favorite players he's ever had. Patterson shows up one day at one of USC's camps with his cousin. At the time Patterson had zero reputation. Anyhow, he comes there as a chunky, sloppy-looking defensive lineman who was so shy that he barely said two words to anybody when he came to Trojan camp. But Orgeron observed how he was surprisingly quick off the ball and really good with his hands. And for all of the shyness, the kid seemed determined. Orgeron started calling Patterson "Baby Sapp," and the more love he showed Patterson, the harder the lineman went.

Another story I liked was USC offered Patterson a scholarship when no other school paid much attention to him after Orgeron convinced Pete Carroll Baby Sapp was going to be something special. Then, that summer there is a high school all-star game on TV and Patterson shows up way overweight. Orgeron's watching it and figures out Carroll must be too because then he keeps seeing "Pete" coming up on his cell as it keeps buzzing. (He opts not to answer it.) Later that day Orgeron calls Patterson and offers him some not-so-subtle encouragement about his conditioning. (I can only imagine how delightful that conversation was.) Anyhow, Patterson ends up as an All-American, first-round draft pick and later signed a huge contract with the Eagles.

Spring Cleaning

At 5:27 a.m. on Monday, May 22, 2006, Ed Orgeron's black Hummer was already parked in the first space next to the Ole Miss football offices. Inside the Rebels' war room, Orgeron sat alone at the big table, jotting down notes on a yellow legal pad, prepping for an 8 o'clock recruiting meeting with his staff.

"Man, it is gonna be a great day!" Orgeron shouted, leaning way back in his chair and stretching his arms above his head. He seemed way more fired up than any person in his right mind could possibly be this long before dawn on a sticky-hot Mississippi morning. He and his staff had been out on the recruiting trail the past month—officially, the Spring Evaluation Period—and this was the first time everybody would come together as a group to share findings.

Obviously, the thought of sitting down with his people and swapping stories about prospects was making Orgeron downright giddy.

Most head coaches, including Orgeron's predecessor. David Cutcliffe, spend a big chunk of the annual four-week evaluation period working the booster circuit or polishing up their short games, leaving most of the actual scouting to their assistants. Not Orgeron. A makeshift calendar on a dry erase board on the other side of the war room showed that he'd been on the road scouting talent every single day, save for the Sundays the NCAA puts off limits.

In Week 1, he'd started in northern Mississippi and worked his way throughout the state in a five-day trek that covered over 1,800 miles and included 21 stops. Orgeron then went to New Orleans and Miami to conclude a hectic opening week.

By the start of Week 2, on May 1, Orgeron was back in Mississippi, before making stops in Tennessee, Mobile, Atlanta, and Arkansas, then returning to Mississippi to wrap up the week by speaking at a clinic and getting more face time with high school coaches.

Weeks 3 and 4 were spent in Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida.

"It was awesome," he said. "Friggin' awe-some!"

Saying that Ed Orgeron loves the chase is like saying that the Mississippi River is wet. The chase for talent feeds his lust for competition. And though he didn't say so right out, you got the feeling he was even more wired about recruiting now, as an underdog, than he had been in the glow of USC's dominance.

A clear, early sign of Orgeron's passion for the chase came in the pre-Pete Carroll era at USC. Back in 2000, after USC fired head coach Paul Hackett, Orgeron continued to recruit even though the Trojans program was leaderless. One day, Orgeron showed up a local high school at the same time as UCLA assistant Gary Bernardi. "What the fuck is he doing here?" Bernardi asked a high school coach within earshot of Orgeron. "He doesn't even have a fuckin' job." Orgeron wanted to tear Bernardi's head off, but instead he just gritted his teeth. A few days later, after he was hired as the new Trojans head coach, Carroll named Orgeron his recruiting coordinator and asked him which area he wanted to recruit personally.

"I want Bernardi," Orgeron answered.

Orgeron wanted to recruit the San Fernando and Santa Clarita schools, traditionally UCLA strongholds, just so he could go head-to-head with Bernardi. And from that day on, Bernardi never beat Orgeron for single player. Two years later, UCLA canned Bernardi.

In Orgeron's mind, every school visit to scout a prospect was game day against the rest of college football. He believed with all his heart—and still does—that he could outwork, outcharm, and outsmart the competition. The keys, he always said, were preparation and mind-set—the same as with a football game.

"It's all about com-pe-tin'!" might as well be tattooed on his chest. During an impromptu 10-minute dissertation after the spring evaluation on how to work the road, Orgeron used the word "compete" eight times. On his final recruiting foray, to a high school football jamboree capped by two two-quarter games, he and receivers coach Matt Lubick outlasted Florida State assistant Kevin Steele and were the last to leave the field. They jawed with high school coaches until 11:30 p.m. "They'd already turned the sprinklers on," Orgeron said proudly.

Orgeron hoped that his passion for recruiting had rubbed off on his staff. He even held a contest for his assistants: Whoever came back with the most visitor passes from high schools won $100. Defensive line coach Ryan Nielsen, the winner of Orgeron's one-day recruiting derby back in the winter, again snagged first place by averaging 10 schools per day.

The Rebels' road map for the spring evaluation period covered 13 states, with each coach following a tightly programmed itinerary. For instance, the 27-year-old Nielsen, a former defensive lineman for Orgeron at USC, was the Rebels' primary recruiter in California. Aside from his one-day trip with Orgeron to Georgia—in large part to see prized defensive tackle prospect Ted Laurent—Nielsen spent all of his road time in the Golden State. Meanwhile, Werner was in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, following the combine circuit where he studied quarterbacks.

While on the surface it might seem inefficient to double up as the Rebels did whenever Orgeron accompanied one of his assistants on the road, it was valuable to have that second set of eyes at scrimmages and combines, where so many things are going on at once. Orgeron also felt that since he was going to have the ultimate say in whether Ole Miss chased a prospect, he needed to eyeball as many of them as possible.

Typically, college programs use the monthlong evaluation process to identify the players they want to pursue for their next recruiting class. In the Rebels' case, it was more of an opportunity to get updates on many of the prospects they'd already targeted for the 2007 class. "I felt like when I walked into a school, it was November," Orgeron said with pride, referring to how far ahead of schedule he believed the Rebels were with regard to National Signing Day on February 7, 2007.

Orgeron's plan to get ahead of his competitors this spring included a new twist for the college scouting circuit: camcorders. Orgeron was looking for a way for his whole staff to see and study as a group what each coach saw while on the road. One of his assistants had told him that he'd noticed an assistant using a camera on the road, and Orgeron's interest had been piqued. After checking with the Ole Miss compliance office to make sure filming prospects was permissible under NCAA rules, Orgeron had the Rebels' video coordinator go to the local Wal-Mart and buy eight camcorders.

A few of the assistant coaches weren't too keen on the idea of adding cameraman to their scouting duties, but Orgeron had obviously convinced himself that video evidence would help fine-tune the evaluation process, so they kept their reservations to themselves.

"It was an, uh, interesting idea," Lubick said. "But it worked out great."

Seeing coaches in Ole Miss garb at high school spring football practices with camcorders drew some puzzled looks from rival assistants. "Most coaches thought we were filming to nab cheaters," Orgeron said. "But this was going to give us a big-time advantage."

Orgeron joked that he would be handing out an Oscar to the assistant who came back with the best film: "That's what they give out, right?"

The Rebels' four-person video staff had spent much of the previous two weeks working on the collection of tape, editing out blurry video and random close-ups of elbows, pylons, and pretty women in the stands to get the film ready for this morning meeting.

The camcorder videotape had been added to the plays compiled on tapes from players' junior seasons. In most cases, this close-up footage would give the Rebels an almost- 3-D view of their prospects, focusing on position-specific movements.

Sitting proudly behind a stack of cassettes neatly aligned on the table in the war room, Orgeron could hardly contain himself as he grabbed the first tape. It was of Bradley Sowell, a mammoth 6'7", 350-pound offensive lineman from Hernando, Mississippi, about 60 miles north of Oxford. Sowell hadn't been highly touted by the Internet recruiting sites, but the Rebels were intrigued enough by his size and agility to offer him in the winter. Sowell, a lifelong Ole Miss fan, reported to Rebelsports.net in February that it took all of 10 seconds for him to commit.

Like most offensive linemen, Sowell was a long-range project. He probably needed to shed 35 pounds before he'd have a prayer of cracking the Rebels' two-deep depth chart. Offensive tackle is the position with the highest washout rate. Offensive line coach Art Kehoe had just left a Miami program with more than a half-dozen OL misfires still on scholarship.

Orgeron hoped he'd done the right thing in pulling the trigger on the young giant. In the back of his mind, he knew better than to jump early at local kids, especially ones who grew up attending all of the college's home games. You could throw out an early scholarship offer to some blue-chipper 2,000 miles away in California just to "get in the boat." But offering the local guy early meant you were offering to buy the boat.

As Orgeron popped in Sowell's tape, he looked for a second as if he might be feeling a touch of buyer's remorse. He took a gulp from the cup of coffee and pushed Play on the remote, then leaned forward in his chair as the camera framed a close up Hernando's spring drills.

"There he is, Big Bradley Sowell!" Orgeron bellowed.

The tape showed Sowell, alongside other offensive linemen on his team, lined up under a four-foot high cage during a blocking drill designed to teach the players to stay low while firing out of their stances toward the defenders. "Wooooo!" Orgeron yelped as Sowell uncoiled out of his stance, took a jab step to his left, then busted through the chute.

"That right there is one of the biggest human beings I've ever seen," Orgeron exclaimed to the room, "and just you wait 'til we get him down to 315. Look at dat big boy!"

Clips like this, of Sowell displaying not only toughness and tenacity but also uncanny flexibility for a man his size, would get any football coach in America excited. Orgeron, just more so. The clip had come from "Freeze-cam"—that is, it was filmed by tight ends coach Hugh Freeze, who had also brought back footage of other Hernando High spring football drills. Without the camcorder, Orgeron would've had to rely on Freeze's description. Thanks to the video, the whole staff could see what Freeze had seen.

Over the next hour, Orgeron buzzed through a dozen more tapes while polishing off another big coffee, a can of Red Bull, and a 16-ounce, caffeinated, chocolate-covered protein bar.

The videos featured an array of athletic maneuvers: Chris Walker, a blue-chip linebacker from Memphis, gliding around a basketball court, effortlessly flipping his hips and shuffling his feet doing defensive drills, and later showing off a variety of dunks as a little bonus … Mike Harris, an unheralded, 310-pound offensive lineman from Duarte, California, exhibiting surprising agility as he moved laterally with his hands held behind his back while walling off a teammate in a pass-rush drill … Gary McClellan, a 6'4", 315-pound defensive lineman from Arkadelphia, Arkansas, swiftly running circles around bags lined up on the ground.

Orgeron, devouring every frame, kept up a running commentary. He liked McClellan's quickness. He didn't like how McClellan came out of a three-point stance and leaned into a blocking sled. "He doesn't know how to work hard," Orgeron decided on the spot, adding that McClellan might make a better offensive guard than defensive tackle.

And then: "Man, I love this. It's just like having him at camp."

By 7:50, nearly the entire staff was assembled around the big table in the war room. Missing: Dan Werner and Art Kehoe, who had been recruiting in Florida and were now in Memphis for a Rebels booster gathering. Orgeron told his assistants that he'd already had a sneak preview of their camerawork and was ecstatic about what they'd brought back. "Everybody is going to have to start doing this," Orgeron beamed. "How do you like that, Coach Rippon?"

On the other side of the table, Chris Rippon, the Rebels' veteran secondary coach, arched his eyebrows and nodded his head. A more usual response to an Orgeron proclamation would have been "Sounds great, Coach." Rippon wasn't ready to give that to his boss this early.

"I bet every assistant coach in the country is hating your guts right now," Rippon said with a grin.

He was probably right. Rebels assistant AD for internal affairs Maurice Harris had already told Orgeron that University of Memphis offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner had said the Rebels were "invading kids' privacy."

"You tell Randy Fichtner that we're fixing to invade his backfield with Jerrell Powe," replied Orgeron, referring to the Rebels' blue-chip defensive tackle prospect who was awaiting clearance from the NCAA.

Orgeron wasn't going to admit that pissing off his rivals was a nice bonus of the camcorder experiment, but you could tell it wasn't exactly breaking his heart.

The recruiting meeting formally opened with Orgeron's leading his staff through their board reports. The nameplates of the recruits—categorized as Committed (orange), Offered (blue), and Prospects (green) and aligned in two columns, In-State and Out-of-State—had been updated to reflect current heights, weights, and 40-yard-dash times. Most of that data had come courtesy of the spring combines and camps conducted all over the country by recruiting websites. The Rebels put one asterisk next to info gleaned from a combine and two next to stats that had been gathered during Ole Miss' own summer camp.

Orgeron insisted that the board be frequently updated because the info would help him prioritize how hard the program should be chasing certain recruits. He repeatedly prodded his assistants to chime in with their thoughts, but as always, he did most of the talking. Virtually every prospect on the Ole Miss recruiting list got assessed over the next hour, some in greater detail than others.

First up: In-State Linebackers.

Linebacker hadn't been designated as one of the program's top five priorities in January. Back then those priorities had been, in descending order of greatest need, O-line, D-line, QB, Safety, and CB. But now, since watching the Rebels' spring practice, Orgeron had become worried. Ole Miss had returning All-America middle linebacker Patrick Willis, a senior; strong-side linebacker Garry Pack, a junior, who was struggling academically; and a motley crew of unproven underclassmen who hadn't impressed Orgeron this spring on or off the field. The Rebels were hoping for contributions from Rory Johnson, a speedy junior college weak-side linebacker, and Jonathan Cornell, an incoming freshman from California, whom they saw as a possible heir apparent to Willis at middle linebacker. But in Orgeron's mind, they were still only maybes.

The LB situation had started unraveling in March, when Stevan Ridley of Natchez, Mississippi, who had committed to Ole Miss in January, announced that he'd changed his mind and was going to LSU. Now, two months later, two of the three remaining LB recruits Orgeron had been counting on looked increasingly doubtful.

Chris Strong, a 6'2", 255-pounder from nearby Batesville, Mississippi: Already committed to the Rebels, Strong was the star of a high school juggernaut that hadn't lost a game in three years. Unfortunately, he was also a poor student and no sure thing to bring admitted to Ole Miss without first spending a year at a prep school or junior college. "This guy is a bona-damn-fide first-round pick!" Orgeron practically screamed. "Ho-ly shit! Big Chris can flat-ass get it! He's raw-dog tough! We can't let him go to no Hargrave Military Academy! We'll go to bat for him!"

Chris Donald, a 6'2", 220-pounder from Tennessee: "He's a great-looking player on film," Orgeron said. "Everybody in the world is after him. It's gonna be us and Tennessee." Back in January, Huge Freeze, the Rebels recruiter in Tennessee, said he thought he could land Donald, but now word was filtering through the grapevine that Donald was thinking it might be nice to spend his next four autumns in Knoxville. (Donald and a few other players from outside Mississippi were listed on the In-State board because either they had already committed to Ole Miss or they were from the Memphis area, which the Rebels believed was as good as home turf.)

Jonathan Frink, a 6'1", 220-pound honor student at Oxford High: Only Frink still appeared to be a mortal lock to sign with the Rebels. He was best friends with Rebels DB recruit Jamison Hughes, the son of Ole Miss cornerbacks coach Tony Hughes. The Rebels staff was familiar with Frink because Rippon and LB coach David Saunders had sons who played for Oxford High. "I love him, big time," Rippon said. "He knows plays before they happen." "I love his intangibles," Saunders added. "The only thing I wonder about is his pure speed." But Frink hadn't committed yet. What was he waiting for?

A few months before, Orgeron had figured Ole Miss would be signing three linebackers in the Class of 2007. Now he was thinking about upping it to five.

Orgeron nodded his head at the praise for Frink and pointed to the words "SIZE-SPEED RATIO," which were written in six-inch-high capital letters on the dry erase board beside the In-State Defense list. "Remember, that's our deal," he said. "The Florida guys are going to come in and tell us who they have, and we can be a little choosy."

The Florida guys were Kehoe and Werner, who'd been recruiting in the southern part of the state, and Lubick, who handled the northern half. Florida usually cranked out about 30 major college linebacker prospects a year, and with the ties Kehoe and Werner had brought from their days at Miami, Orgeron was hoping to cash in.