Meat Market

In college football, the first Wednesday in February is New Year's Day, the Fourth of July, and Christmas all rolled into one. It's payoff time for screening miles of videotape and balancing the promise of a dazzling 40-yard-dash time vs. the perils of a putrid GPA. It's National Signing Day.

In this eye-opening analysis of college football's secret season, author Bruce Feldman takes you deep inside the war room of legendary recruiter Ed Orgeron. In a blow-by-blow account of the year leading up to National Signing Day 2007, Feldman reveals the inner secrets of Orgeron's success as he and his Ole Miss staff go off hunting high school students. Packed with candid confessions, Meat Market makes the actual football season-the one that runs from September through January-read like a postscript.

Bruce Feldman is the author of Cane Mutiny. A senior writer at ESPN The Magazine since its launch in 1998, Feldman writes a popular college football blog for ESPN.com. His articles have been cited in The Best American Sports Writing. He lives in California.

"Meat Market follows former Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron as he scours the country for talent, taking readers deep inside the swamp of college football recruiting. Feldman describes a system that lives down to a fan's worst expectations." —Sports Illustrated

"A wild ride through the recruiting period."—Montreal Gazette