All disclosures first: we’ve talked with Bruce Feldman on the phone, met him in person once, and are quoted once in his new book on recruiting, Meat Market. We’re also quoted in several other books, as well, including Gridskipper’s upcoming guide to sex clubs around the world. (Pg. 256, Bangkok section. “No club is more welcoming to the homely, naked, and needy male than Club Superpussy! A thousand cocktails to them! Come for the awkward group sex, stay for the Pad Thai special!”)

It’s great. Buy it.

Nevertheless, despite having contact with us, Feldman is a masterful observational writer, disappearing into the background of Meat Market as the eye for a year’s worth of frenetic recruiting by a modern master: Ed “The” Orgeron, who let Feldman tag along as Coach O ran through a zillion hours of tape and several reservoirs of Red Bull and coffee in his quest to restock the cabinet with talent at Ole Miss.

The book’s a meticulously researched book, but don’t mistake the precision for a lack of blood. The story’s got all the life it needs in one Ed Orgeron, who seems to be bigger in real-life than we could ever make him here in the blogosphere. We’ll just tempt with two scenes from the book that involve actual, witnessed events or conversations during a typical Orgeron recruiting process.

One: Jerrell Powe and Ed Orgeron actually squared off in Powe’s high school parking lot. Someone saw them practicing swim moves and called the school to tell them that “a huge white man and a huge black man” were wrestling in the parking lot.

Two: An actual conversation between TE coach Hugh Freeze and Ed Orgeron about a recruit who fancied Ole Miss after a visit.

Freeze: “I think he really likes us because you wrestled with him.”

Orgeron: “Shit, that son-of-a-bitch was strong. After he pinched me under the arms, it was ON.”

We can’t sell the book any more convincingly than that. We woke up at 5 a.m. the other day to read it. It’s a peek into the least understood portion of the football year, and a rousing portrait of someone truly obsessed with the process.

Buy it.

Ole Miss’s halftime had special spark this weekend thanks to a wondrous treat: daytime fireworks. Fireworks are awesome–the cheaper and more bootleg they are the better, and the phrase “Mississippi Fireworks” certainly reeks of both–but they lose some of their efficacy when deployed in broad daylight. Because you can’t see them. Because it’s 2 in the afternoon in Oxford, Mississippi.

COACHOGONNABURNTHISMUTHADOWN!

It’s really great, though, when the fireworks make things catch fire and not work.

A halftime fireworks display gone awry knocked out power to half of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday.

The game was not delayed and power was restored early in the fourth quarter.

Ole Miss officials may seem negligent for continuing despite the lack of a proper scoreboard, but consider this: with Ole Miss not scoring until the fourth quarter in a 44-8 defeat to the SEC’s only other team without a conference win, there really wasn’t much incentive to turn the power back on, was there?

At least Ed Orgeron got to go out there, cigarette in mouth and beer in hand, and light off the $55.95 Carnival Extravaganza multipack for the fans. He was probably trying to burn the place down to avoid playing the second half–they were down 21-0 at the half–but it was a nice cover for the failed attempt at arson.

(Massive HT: Ragin’ Cajun Rebel.)

Coach O’s a busy man. Zoom in once you click to see just how busy he can be.

We can’t look past Hate Week just yet–but the Shadow of the Orgeron is long, and tinged with fire and the smell of smoked meats of many species. Erik at Deep South Sports spies our favorite kind of story–rank hearsay!–concerning a young autograph seeker and the Orgeron at a local little league game.

He waited until the game was over, so as not to bother him while the game was going on. He stood there waiting with his Florida Gator team hat (the five year old that is). When his turn came, he was very rudely turned away by Orgeron. He told my son he was not going to sign his hat because it was a Florida hat.

Nancy Grace is outraged, OUTRAGED WE TELL YOU! The EDSBS official stance is this: when Somali Bantu mothers have daughters, they slap them from infancy. Why? Because life for the Bantu is hard, and for women it is hardest. To the child with the Gator hat, welcome to your baptism in the Church of Arbitrary Laundry-Based Hatred and its first instructional slap–and consider yourself lucky you weren’t dressed for the grill and cut into chops on the spot.

(Check the photo–who knew he had such shiny knees? Your reflection in them would be the last thing you see.)

In five days: FOOTBAW.

The great search for a quarterback at Ole Miss–now four years and running following the departure of Eli Manning from Oxford–may have reached an improbable conclusion in the form of one ferocious piece of fighting okra, Delta State transfer Seth Adams.

Brent SCHAEF-FAH, lauded transfer from Tennessee via the College of the Sequoias, was supposed to be the starter going into 2007, but fizzled last year as starter with a 9/10 TD/INT ratio and an underwhelming on-field presence as signal-caller. Enter Seth Adams, a former Delta State Fighting Okra who went 16 for 20 in the spring game and has “a leg up” in the competition according to Ole Miss head coach/manbeast Ed Orgeron.

Correct, reader: Ole Miss’ potential quarterback is a transfer from Delta State. YO YO YO YO YOOOOOO, YO YOOOOO…OK-RA!!! This should be immensely fun, especially given the fact that Adams gives everyone a chance to say the words “Fighting Okra” at least a zillion times over the nexy season.

Delta State’s Fighting Okra: qb mill for the Orgeron.

Don’t mock the name, either. As anyone whose eaten more than a small serving of okra at a time, okra does indeed fight, albeit in your lower intestine mostly. It’ll run through you with a Patton-esque speed and determination, a connection the designers of the Delta State outfit must have had in mind when they stitched together that turdulent, Mr. Hankey outfit seen above.

Women, tackling dummies, lots of 40ish women doing deep squats: it all sounds like one of Carl Spackler’s more feverish sexual fantasies, but no! we say–it’s the Ole Miss women’s football camp, yet another one of those marginal offseason fundraisers that fill the long, empty, desolate, but now only 68 days or so until college football season begins.

And this article from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal is really the first and last thing you need to read about this year’s wave of camps, because we can assure you with scientific certainty that nothing, and we mean ABSOLUDDDELY NOFIN’ GONNA TOP DA OWE MISSAH CAMP with your honored host, the Orgeron.

LADEEZ DA OWGERON GONNA LURNYA SOMMADAT GOODOWWFASHUNNED FOOTBAW!!!

OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron stood at the center of 400 screaming women.

“WAR TIME! TAKE IT OUTSIDE! WAR TIME! TAKE IT OUTSIDE!”

This is precisely what Ed Orgeron says to all the women he takes back to “The Tannery,” (more…)

Freshmen typically don’t make huge dents in their initial year in college football. If they do, they typically enter two career tracks: the Herschel Walker path-strewn-with-rose-petals career track, where children are named after you before you graduate, or the Mike Vick pattern where a spectacular peak in his freshman season dwindling out in a pitter-patter of injuries and unfulfillable expectations. (Not that THAT ended badly for him. He’s still able to afford the finest of chiba, and the elaborate technology required to transport it through airports successfully 99.999% of the time.)

Point is: even if you peak early, you’ll still have a peak. That’s more than most people can say about…well, about their lives, really. And in trying to write your “WOOO freshman who you should watch!!!” column, you’re looking for players who through massive graduation losses, sheer ineptitude by coaching staffs, or dumb luck could have the chance to alter game plans singlehandedly.

They typically tend to be at skill positions like running back, where quick-twitch nothink can get someone very, very far on talent and gall alone. Guile and technique take time, which is why linemen take years of coaching and investment to grow save for the umbrella-handed natural Orlando Paces of the world. There’s a few in there as well, but as you’ll see they’re of the obvious sort. (Hello, Marvin Austin.)

A few of our future Walker/Vick career path selections…

Joe McKnight, RB USC. Potentially horrifying scatback-y type from Louisiana who already fit the USC mold coming in by embroiling himself in a minor recruiting controversy. Allegedly runs a 4.3, allegedly shifty as Juan Pablo Montoya on a road course, and definitely loaded with blue-chip reputation burden. Fortunately for him, so is everyone else at USC, so he’s in good company, even in a packed backfield. Carroll (hearts) freshmen, and could use McKnight as Reggie Bush was used early in his career, making appearances on third down, in the slot, split wide, and hopefully not skeezing a free house off a semi-retarded sports agent under his coach’s nose.

Joe McKnight: elusive, as Les Miles and Ed Orgeron found out the hard way.

Noel Devine, RB WVU. Noted physical freak with academic shortcomings, Devine has qualified at last and is heading to West Virginia. Given the slew of speedy, option-friendly talent already stockpiled there, Devine would seem to have a year of chopping in front of him. Consider that his coach will be Rich Rodriguez, (more…)