General

Pssst: Mark Richt Would Like to Know The Answer to Eric Berry

Aug 6, 2009, 9:00 PM UTC

Tennessee uber-safety Eric Berry is so good that the Vols can focus a Heisman campaign on him and the general response is “stupid Heisman wouldn’t give Berry the thing last year when he deserved it” instead of “Tennessee is dead meat.” He was pretty uber as a recruit, too: the No. 3 overall player on the Rivals 100, the top cornerback and top Georgian. Newspaper columnists looking to rail against recruiting services should whistle past this particular graveyard. â†µâ†µAnyway, mondo recruit and future Heisman hopeful—if only in a technical sense—in Georgia is probably an excellent player for Georgia to recruit, no? And you’d expect that the Dawgs would be all up in this guy’s grill with biographical details not even Berry knew about. (“My great uncle’s father’s sister’s dogsitter’s grandfather was George Washington Carver? Sweet. Give me some peanut butter so I can bask in the glory of my ancestors. Today I feel like patenting peanut jet fuel.”)â†µ

â†µâ†µBut, no, not so much: â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥“I guess I just felt like Georgia thought they had me in the bag, and they didn’t even know about me and I was in their backyard,” Berry explains. “I remember when I went on my recruiting visit, coach (Mark) Richt had my name and stats written on his hand. I guess he thought I didn’t see it or something, but I did.”â†µâ†µâ†µEric Berry is a calculus exam in pads. Even with the cheat sheet Richt freaked out and started integrating doohickeys when he should have been deriving thingamabobs:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥“They were talking to me about playing wide receiver; they didn’t even know my position was safety and quarterback. That really made me upset.”â†µâ†µ

â†µRicht was playing from behind on this one anyway—Berry's father went to Tennessee—but that didn't help. I am reminded of a legendary, possibly apocryphal recruiting tale from Tommy Amaker's years at Michigan: center recruit Ekpe Udoh, currently scheduled to swat half of the shots taken by Baylor opponents this fall after a transfer, spent an entire official visit to Michigan being called "Epke" before gently correcting the head coach before he left. Amazingly, Udoh ended up at Michigan anyway; more amazingly, he transferred out after Amaker left. To Baylor.â†µ

â†µâ†µThe lesson, as always: know the name of the person you are talking to. True wisdom from Sporting News to you. Use it at parties, seductions and parent-teacher conferences.â†µ

â†µâ†µ(H/T to Doctor Saturday.)â†µ

â†µ

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