Soon, the Real War Begins
Americans carry certain preconceptions about the South.
Two big ones, mostly.
First:
Everything in the South is big.
But really, that one is Texas's fault — not the South's as a whole.
Texans love to boast, so they love bigger hats (they get you noticed), bigger heads (there's a myth that a big head means a big brain), and bigger attitudes (maturity of mind, or sheer bravado).
I got a taste of that culture back in San Antonio last January, when folks from Texas took it upon themselves to explain to my parents and me just how generous they could be.
The reason it never came across as arrogant was simple.
It was Texas, plain and simple.
That's genuinely just how they are there.
And second:
The magic words that symbolize the American South.
Southern Charm.
On the surface it sounds like a compliment. In practice, it's anything but. It's a phrase coined to mock the appearance and behavior of the so-called Rednecks — the uneducated, the filthy, the close-minded, the ones who still believe Black people should be slaves and that Latinos and Asians aren't human beings at all.
But as I said, all of this is nothing more than prejudice.
Someone says, "Isn't the whole American South like that?" — and the first place to fly into a rage will be right here.
Louisiana.
#. May 31, 2018
#-1. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
#-2. Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport
"Enjoy your flight?"
"The flight was so-so…."
"Oh, dear."
"But stepping off here put me in a good mood right away. Thank you for finding my bags."
"Haha. You have a wonderful day now—"
"You just made it one."
From the moment my feet touched Louisiana soil, the capital's flagship airport radiated hospitality from every pore. Thanks to that, the queasiness left by all those patches of turbulence was fading fast.
I passed through the gate and stepped outside, and the person I was looking for was standing right there.
Before the picket sign in his hands, something else caught my eye first.
Purple lettering on a yellow hat.
LSU.
That had to be the man who came to meet me.
He spotted me at the same moment and broke into a smile, then ambled over and extended his hand.
"Dwayne Moi Stone?"
"Yes sir."
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Steve Ensminger. Just call me Steve."
"You're LSU's OC, aren't you?"
"Hm? You knew that?"
"I did a little research. The internet's a handy thing these days."
"Hahaha. Good for you. Well then — shall we?"
Steve Ensminger.
As I said, LSU's offensive coordinator. A Baton Rouge native born here in 1958, he enrolled at LSU in 1976 and spent four years as the Tigers' quarterback. He had a brief professional stint in New Orleans and Philadelphia, but lacking the talent for the pros, he hung it up after two years and has been coaching ever since.
Anyway.
I trailed after Steve, dragging my carry-on behind me.
As we walked—
"Steve!"
"?"
"Go Tigers!"
A fair number of people recognized Steve and called out greetings across the terminal. Hardly surprising — the man was born and raised here and had been on LSU's coaching staff since 2010. Of course half the airport knew his face.
"Load your bag in the back there."
"Yes sir."
Thump. I climbed into the car, and we set off toward LSU. Somewhere along the way, Steve posed a question.
"Ever been to Louisiana?"
"No. First time."
"It's a fine place. Baton Rouge especially is a good town to live in. You'll come to see that soon enough."
This gentleman is recruiting me under his breath.
But for now I played dumb.
"Is three days not enough to find out?"
"Not nearly."
His sly little pitch irritated me a touch, but even so, he was a genuinely excellent coach. He'd taken over the tight ends and dragged a position Group of Five below sea level up to above average, and in 2017, amid a chaotic internal mess, he'd picked up two more jobs on top of that and handled them all well. Among NCAA circles, the word on him was, "A bit conservative, but the man knows his craft."
"How's the season prep coming along?"
"Just getting started."
"Looks like you've been training hard."
"I like being in the gym."
"Haha. Good to hear."
Anyway.
People are always curious what a high school football player actually weighs when he's choosing a college. Assume you've got scholarship offers from at least two D1 programs — what matters most?
First, it varies from player to player. Weather. Distance from home. Food. It starts with small-but-important things like those, and stretches on through the conference a school plays in, its recent record, the head coach, the caliber of the teammates you'd play beside, the school's academic standing.
But what people surprisingly rarely understand is this one:
The position coaches.
Football assigns a dedicated coach to every position, and a quarterback in particular has to weigh the head coach, the offensive coordinator, and the QB coach all at once.
On that front, LSU isn't bad.
Whether it's the best, I can't say yet — but they've earned at least a 75 from me.
"There — you can see campus now."
"…."
I said everything in the South is big because of Texas, but broadly speaking, the college campuses down here are all massive. BYU, which I visited last year, sat on 737 acres with over 300 buildings. LSU has only about 260 buildings — but its grounds sprawl across a staggering 2,000 acres.
In any case, an absolutely colossal place, the South.
In more ways than one.
"Park here. Leave the bags."
"Yes sir."
We'd pulled into the interior of Tiger Stadium — the home field of the LSU football team. Presumably he intended to walk me straight out onto the turf.
Today was the final day of the receivers camp. The quarterbacks' camp began tomorrow.
"Not sure if you knew, but today's the last day of the receiver camp."
"Are there kids from out of the region like me?"
"There are, but most of them are local — one state line away at most. Nobody's crossed an ocean to be here like you have."
Louisiana's neighbors, after all, amounted to Texas and Mississippi. If they came from nearby, they were probably from around Houston and Jackson. Arkansas or Dallas weren't out of the question either.
"Lot of good receivers in the region this year."
"Good to hear."
"Hm?"
"This is LSU, after all."
"…Heh. Right, right."
When I said good to hear, Steve took it entirely the wrong way for a second. He assumed the "good" was good for me — that I was considering, or all but decided on, LSU. His face started to brighten before I mentioned it being a good thing for the college, and he turned away, visibly deflated.
No, no.
It genuinely is a good thing, though. A deep regional talent pool is a good thing, isn't it? Makes recruiting easier for everybody.
Steve, walking ahead of me, gave me the tour of Tiger Stadium.
"Truly a magnificent place."
"I've only seen it on video."
"Nothing beats seeing it with your own two eyes."
"I suppose not."
LSU's home field had survived two full reconstructions and nine expansions to become the 102,321-seat colossus it stood as today — the second-largest stadium in the SEC behind Texas A&M's Kyle Field, fifth-largest in the entire NCAA, and seventh-largest of any sports stadium on Earth. In good seasons, every game sold out; even in bad ones, the place never failed to move at least 95,000 tickets. It was famous, too, for its wide range of facilities and one of the finest training complexes in the NCAA — though Steve said he'd save all that for a proper introduction later.
For now—
"…."
"Well? What do you think?"
"Breathtaking."
I meant to drink in every inch of this gorgeous stadium with both eyes. It would be incredible to play here.
I liked LSU's colors, too.
White. Yellow. Purple.
"Oh — there's Ed."
Following Steve toward where Ed Orgeron stood, I swept my gaze across the crowd of high schoolers spread across the field. Probably a hundred of them — that was the per-position camp roster. But of those hundred receivers, fewer than thirty would still be surviving at the D1 level two years from now.
"Moi!"
"Good to see you, Coach."
"None of that formality. What do you think of our stadium?"
"It's beautiful. Far more than it ever looked on video."
"Nothing beats seeing and experiencing a thing for yourself."
Ed Orgeron came at me with easy familiarity and clapped a hand on my shoulder, then said there were people he wanted me to meet and steered me off to one side. Coaches, I assumed.
Not even close.
"Justin! Ja'Marr! Terrace!"
Wait — what?
LSU guys were here too?
I'd assumed the camp was just local high school kids, but whether they needed bodies to run demonstrations, players who had just signed with LSU or were already on the roster had come out as well.
Justin Jefferson. Ja'Marr Chase. Terrace Marshall Jr.
"Say hello. This is Dwayne Moi Stone."
"Hey."
"Good to meet you."
"Well, damn. Look who it is!"
"Haha. I saw that tweet you posted."
Ja'Marr Chase, shaking my hand now, had been named the best wide receiver in the country last year alongside Amon-Ra. If he'd played in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, he'd have been on the West squad with me — but he'd turned down the invitation, so we never shared a field. After the roster announcement, he'd put up tweets that read like regret over declining, and they'd made the rounds. Never in my life did I expect to run into Ja'Marr Chase here.
Last was Terrace Marshall Jr. — another 5-star, a Top-20 national prospect from last year's class, ranked fifth at his position.
"How about it? Want to help out with a training session?"
"Me? Right now?"
"Well, the coaches will handle the other campers. Think of it as rehearsing tomorrow a day early. If you're tired, no obligation."
In Hawaii he'd at least kept his appetite half-hidden, but the moment we hit the mainland, the man wasn't even pretending anymore.
Then again, I'd come here expecting exactly this, and not an ounce of me was disappointed. I nodded, said sure, and set down my bag.
No need to change clothes. I could run as I was — only the shoes needed swapping.
"We'll provide the helmet."
"Yes sir."
After all, my whole reason for coming here was verification.
Verification of Ed Orgeron and Steve Ensminger. I wanted to gauge just how well LSU actually taught the quarterback position — and, once this visit became known, to watch how the other schools reacted.
There was no reason to hold anything back on my end. I would simply give the camp everything I had.
As I laced up new shoes and ran through a light warmup, Steve came over and showed me a notebook laying out how the session would run.
"Yeah, I can handle that."
"Mind if I trust you without a longer look?"
"Yup."
Complex stuff was off the table for today anyway — only the most basic things were possible. When he asked if I needed more time to loosen up, I said a few long passes would do the trick; he nodded, called Justin Jefferson over, and told him to run routes for me.
I took my position where I wouldn't interfere with the players training on the field, told Jefferson to give it everything down the sideline, and waited.
No approach steps. I simply looked to the sky.
"…."
The ball left my hand and climbed high into the air — then dropped, perfectly, into Jefferson's arms as he ran beneath it some sixty yards away.
"Let me try two more."
"Uh? Ah— yeah. Yeah, sure."
Steve was rattled, and it showed. I pretended not to notice and let one corner of my mouth curl upward.
#. 6:20 PM
#-1. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
#-2. LSU
#-3. Ed Orgeron's office
The NCAA's football recruiting rules are a labyrinth. They're due to change on January 1st of next year, but nobody expects that to make them any simpler.
Under the current framework, contact with a player is allowed from the moment his high school enrollment is confirmed — only the offer itself is off-limits. Actual recruitment talk becomes legal on June 15th before junior year, when phone calls open up, and that's also when scholarship offers can finally be extended. From August 1st, the fall semester of senior year, schools may extend official campus invitations — and before that same date, even unofficial visits are prohibited. Camps are the lone exception, carved out of the visit rules entirely.
And yet.
Doesn't something about all this smell off?
I've been showered with scholarship offers since long before any of those dates arrived. And I've turned down a large share of them. ESPN, CBS, NBC, Fox — every major American outlet has reported on exactly how many schools I've already said no to.
Which means:
The NCAA's recruiting regulations, as they exist today, can be prosecuted if you want to prosecute them — or waved away entirely if you don't. A set of rules that is, in a word, utterly useless.
That's why no one tries to follow them. Everyone merely avoids the most nakedly obvious violations, then bends the rulebook like taffy whenever it suits them.
Trevor Lawrence being recruited by Georgia from the day he left middle school is common knowledge. I've come up through my own thicket of exceptions as well.
Me sitting in this chair right now is, by the letter of the NCAA code, a mountain of violations.
But these men know exactly how to thread the needle around the existing rules. They'd walk into college sports' supreme court fully confident of walking out with a win.
Naturally.
"Your phone's about to get very busy, I imagine."
"I'm braced for it."
"Might need a second phone, no?"
"Already planning on it."
From September 1st of junior year, athletes may receive private communication of every form from NCAA programs — email, texts, social media DMs, letters. Weekly phone calls with college coaches open up as well. The catch: the coaches must remain on campus during those calls, and if they're caught violating that, the penalties run as far as rescinding a player's commitment. That restriction lifts on January 1st of the following year, about half a semester into senior season — from then on, coaches can call from anywhere. Still just once a week, though.
"So — how was the early taste of camp?"
"Loved it. Hoping to learn even more tomorrow."
"You will. Finest instruction you'll find anywhere."
"Looking forward to it."
Let me say it once more, for the record: extending me a commitment offer right now would violate NCAA rules.
The reason every offer I've received so far has come through unofficial channels is precisely so there's room to deny everything, should any of it ever surface. Hence Ed Orgeron's technique — circling the point in wide, deliberate loops.
"You and Justin and Chase looked like two peas in a pod out there."
"They're good receivers."
"Among the very best."
When he mentioned that an excellent left tackle would be enrolling next year, I replied that it would be a good thing for Joe Burrow. And Ed Orgeron's answer came back like this:
"He'll be protecting the 2020 class even better."
"…."
Interesting.
Very interesting.
"If today were June 15th, I could lay out the team's official vision for you."
"You've pretty much already done that, haven't you?"
"Hm? Never. I merely remarked that a fine left tackle arrives next year. Nothing to do with any vision. As you said yourself, it's a good thing for Joe Burrow."
Hmm—
So that's the flavor of it, is it?
I'd accepted LSU's camp invitation partly because Ed Orgeron made a good impression — and partly because I wanted a preview of how a school like this actually runs its recruiting. Until now, 99% of my recruiting has been experienced by my parents. My mother, above all. The offers I've handled personally, start to finish, number exactly two: BYU and UCLA.
And even last year's BYU invitation was officially billed as a "special invitation to advance the interests of Polynesian football players," with the offer delivered in the head coach's office — no CCTV. He was in the room with me, sure, but no voice offering me enrollment would have been caught on any recording.
If you pressed hard enough, the only real candidate for a violation would be that long message UCLA sent me last year — and even that left plenty of cover, because it scrupulously avoided every directly explicit line. On its face, that message had nothing whatsoever to do with recruiting.
Anyway.
"If today were June 15th…"
From there, Ed Orgeron spun out story after story, every one of them opening with that same sentence — and every one of them ending with the same conclusion: we'll give you everything, come to LSU.
After I slipped out of his coils like a snake one too many times, even Ed Orgeron gave up.
"Well, look at the hour. Tomorrow, then."
"Yes. See you tomorrow."
"Right. Someone will be by to move you to your lodging."
"If it's no trouble, could you drop me at a restaurant nearby?"
"I'll pass that along."
Click. I stepped out of the head coach's office and stretched until my joints cracked.
It was only a taste, granted. But in two weeks, the real madness would begin — an endless flood of college officials descending on my school, calls and messages pouring in from every direction. I'd been bracing for it for a long time, but I'd need to keep my guard up all the same.
Still.
"A productive day."
Thinking I'd gotten a great deal out of it, I headed back toward the parking lot alongside the man who'd been showing me around.
D-14 until the recruiting restrictions come off.
Soon, the real war begins.
But first — before any of that — I fully intend to enjoy this camp. That $150 registration fee deserves its money's worth.
For now:
"Are there any good restaurants near my lodging?"
"Plenty. Shall we eat together?"
"You know we're splitting the bill, right?"
"Haha. Of course. Let's go."
I decided to leave two-weeks-from-now to the me of two weeks from now. Today, I'm focusing on what's in front of me.