In college football circles, 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 a year spent screening miles of videotape and probing mountains of data, balancing the promise of a dazzling 40-yard dash time against the perils of a putrid GPA, and text-messaging high schoolers 50 times a day. It??'s the day when coaches across the country camp out in front of their fax machines waiting for their football futures to be decided by a bunch of 18-year-olds. It??'s National Signing Day. In this surprising andunprecedented dissection of college football??'s secret season, author BruceFeldman takes you deep inside the war room of Ole Miss head coach Ed Orgeron, thecombustible Cajun who built national championship teams at the University of Miamiand USC before setting up shop in the Deep South. In a blow-by-blow account ofthe year leading up to National Signing Day 2007, author Bruce Feldman reveals the inner secrets of Orgeron??'s success, recounting ever step along theway as the Ole Miss staff picks 25 winners from a list of 1,000 names. Meat Market makes the actual football season ??? the one that runs from September through January ???read like a postscript.??

"One of the most insightful books ever written about college football."

- The New York Times

"Easily among the best sports books of the new millennium."

- Paul Finebaum, columnist and radio host

In this unprecedented look at college football’s secret season, Bruce Feldman rips the cover off the game’s frenzied pursuit of raw talent, taking you deep inside the SEC war room of recruiting legend Ed Orgeron,the combustible Cajun who helped build national championship teams at the University of Miami and at USC. In a stunning, blow-by-blow account of the year leading up to National Signing Day 2007, the award-winning journalist shadows Orgeron and his Ole Miss assistants as they set about hunting high school students, pleading, plotting, and inventing ways to lure them to their sleepy Oxford campus. Packed with candid confessions and outrageous off-the-field action, Meat Market makes what happens on the field seem almost tame by comparison.