Ed Orgeron once went into a recruit’s mom’s fridge and helped himself to red beans and rice

Day 1 of December’s Early Signing Period began on Wednesday, and teams across the country are filling out their 2018 classes. One of those is LSU, whose class currently has 10 blue-chip recruits, and is ranked 14th in the nation per the 247Sports Composite.

During LSU’s live broadcast of the day, former LSU Tiger defensive lineman Marlon Favorite recounted one of his favorite Ed Orgeron recruiting stories — when the coach helped himself to some red beans and rice from his mom’s own fridge. At the time, Orgeron was on USC’s staff.

“He comes over to the house, man, and Julie, he makes himself at home,” Favorite told Julie Brinks-Stewart. “He walks in, ‘hey, how y’all doing today?’ went straight to the kitchen. ‘Oh, it smell pretty good in here, man!’ my mom was like ‘well, I cooked some red beans!’ so then, ‘oh, for real?’ So he goes into the refrigerator, pulls out a pot of red beans ‘hey, y’all got some rice?’ my mom comes with a pot of rice, he scoops the rice, puts the red beans and rice together. ‘Hey, so y’all have like a cover? I’ll use a napkin.’ He takes the napkin, put it over there, put the food in the microwave, and then he started talking football. That’s making yourself at home. It really was a big, big recruiting tool that worked like a charm because I was this close to saying ‘hey, should I go to USC?’”

Favorite ended up signing with LSU over USC in 2004, and he played for the Tigers through 2008. He had various stints in the NFL, AFL, and UFL until 2012. Orgeron is a native of Louisiana, so helping himself to a Cajun staple clearly went a long way. Although it wasn’t enough to sign him to the Trojans, this is still an amazing story about Coach O.