Review — Meat Market
If you haven’t read any of Bruce Feldman’s books you should. In fact start with this one which was one of his first. It’s called ‘Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting’ which follows Ed Orgeron during his tenure as the Ole Miss head coach. While published back in 2008, it still provides a great view into the hustle and bustle of recruiting at a Power 5 school and above all shows you that stars next to recruits names don’t mean a whole lot.
Feldman is one of the best college football insiders there is. He knows everyone and has been covering the sport for, well let’s just say he’s been doing it for many moons. ‘Meat Market’ is the result of him being the proverbial fly on the wall in the Ole Miss ‘war room’ and witnessing first hand the constant struggle to find and sell players on Ole Miss. It’s all hands on deck all of the time with recruiting and Orgeron is one of the best. He is relentless and expects his staff to be as well.
The amount of time it takes to recruit players to a university makes you wonder how any of the coaches have time to, you know, coach. After reading this book I am becoming more and more convinced that the energy it takes to recruit players sacrifices the time you have to develop players. And with the rules changing where kids can transfer at a moments notice, one wonders about the future of recruiting and if it won’t end up being more like NFL free agency.
Reading this book years after the fact allows one to look back with rose colored glasses. Most of the players Ole Miss signed didn’t exactly “pan out” but some of the ones that got away didn’t either so it kind of balances out. It is tough to read about Ole Miss not trying to recruit someone like Von Miller though. I mean, he certainly panned out.
The book can get long in the tooth every so often but what Feldman really gets you are the stories of these players that are being recruited. Some from broken homes and do whatever they can to get out, some are overwhelmed by the recruiting process and some play the recruiting process for all it’s worth. The sad thing is that these stories replay themselves year in and year out as 17 and 18 year old kids go on ESPN to announce their decision like they are God’s gift to whichever university they committed to. For a lot, that announcement ends up being their 15 seconds of fame.
In the end I am going to read whatever Feldman decides to write about especially when it comes to college football. So pick up this one or any of this other books.
