Free A Season Inside by John Feinstein Page A

anywhere, anytime, but he won’t do it. And before the game, I’d like the two of us to be locked in a wrestling room naked by ourselves and let’s see which one of us comes out.”
    As Brown talked about Knight this cool Friday September afternoon, his assistant, Carse, was driving toward the Jent home. Pittsburgh had already visited Jent, Georgia Tech would be in on Sunday, and Ohio State would visit the following Wednesday. Brown was wound up.
    He was under fire again, but didn’t care. He was about to receive a verbal commitment from Stanley Roberts, a 6–10 center from South Carolina. In August, Brown had made a commitment to hire Roberts’s high school coach the following season. One month later, without ever visiting LSU, Roberts committed to the school.
    There is nothing in the rules against what Brown had done. What’s more, the move was hardly unique. In fact, it was the fifth time Brown had done it during his LSU career. But because Roberts was so highly regarded, this had attracted a lot of attention.
    “The NCAA called me and said they were looking into it,” Brown said, “I said to the guy, ‘What are you looking into? Where’s the violation? You guys have been after me so long, you think there’s one rule out there I don’t know?’ ”
    One of the schools that had been after Roberts, and lost him to Brown, was Georgia Tech. Two days later when Tech Coach Bobby Cremins and his assistant Kevin Cantwell visited the Jents, Arnie Jent would comment on how charming he had found Brown. “I was afraid,” Cantwell said later, “that Bobby was going to throw up all over their rug.”
    Brown knew he had only an outside shot at Jent. His mission on thisvisit was to convince Jent to visit LSU. If he could do that he believed Jent might make a last-minute switch in his thinking.
    Sparta is a comfortable, upper-crust suburb in northern New Jersey. Chris Jent is the third of Arnie and Trish Jent’s four children. His two older brothers, Tim and Eric, were athletes too. Arnie Jent was a basketball player at the University of Detroit and is now an account executive at the Atlantic Design Company.
    Brown and Carse arrive shortly after 6 P.M. and are welcomed by Chris, his parents, and Megan, Jent’s four-year-old sister. There is nothing subtle in Brown’s pitch. He is selling from the minute he sits down in the comfortable Jent living room.
    “Craig,” he says to Carse, “when Nike was over, who did I tell you was my favorite player in the camp, my absolute number-one favorite player, the guy I wanted more than anyone?”
    “Honest to God, Mr. and Mrs. Jent, it was Chris,” Carse says, answering his boss. “I knew it, too. I knew the way Chris played that was what he was going to say.”
    Brown is rolling. “You remember when I called you this summer just to say hi and see how you all were doing?” The Jents nod. “You know where I was? The Amazon. I went down there to spend some time in the jungle and when I got to a phone I called you from there. Cost me $112. It was worth it, though.”
    The Jents are wide-eyed. Brown goes on. “You know, coming over in the car, I was thinking about this whole recruiting thing that all we coaches do. Let’s be honest about it. The whole thing is a giant hypocrisy. I’m sitting here with you tonight telling you why it would be great for Chris to come to LSU, how easy it is for all of you to fly from Newark to New Orleans and for him to get home when he wants to, how the travel isn’t a problem. Tomorrow, I’ll be home telling a bunch of in-state recruits how much it will help them to stay home and go to LSU.
    “We all do that. But, let’s be honest, it’s a business. We’ll all sit here and tell you how we want to do what’s right and we want to make the world a better place. Hell, if any of us were serious we’d drop all this, drop all the money we make, and go work with Mother Teresa. What are the chances of that happening?
    “But I will say this to