THE SELLING GAME

The art of persuasion — or should I say “selling”? — is paramount in sports today.

In college football, it’s called “the recruiting season.” Many coaches are hired and paid handsome salaries because of their ability to sell programs to 18-year-old high school phenoms.

In the NFL and NBA, head coaches and general managers put on their selling hats when the free agent market opens up. Remember a few years ago, when there was a great deal of hubbub about the secret meetings between LeBron James and the Miami Heat when Pat Riley was selling King James on South Beach? When Dwight Howard left the Orlando Magic as a free agent, he was involved in considerable courtships on the part of several NBA teams before he agreed to sign with the L.A. Lakers.

Freshly minted two-time Super Bowl champion Peyton Manning was released by the Indianapolis Colts a few years ago after he missed a season and a half while undergoing four neck surgeries. Despite questions about his advancing age and physical condition, three or four top flight NFL teams  pulled out the PowerPoint presentations and all the stops, selling Manning on their franchise and explaining that he was the missing link to a Super Bowl championship.

Denver won that bidding war, and was rewarded with two Super Bowl trips and that Lombardi Trophy that was presented a few weeks ago in what could be the final game of Manning’s Hall of Fame career.

Selling one’s self as an athletic product, so to speak, works both ways on the collegiate and professional levels. The process involves the players. Recall the time 10 years ago when former San Diego Chargers quarterback Drew Brees, who was nursing a decimated throwing shoulder, had to go out and sell himself and prove to skeptical teams and head coaches that he could once again rise from the injury ashes to be an elite NFL quarterback. Former Miami Dolphins head coach Nick Saban didn’t buy in on Brees and regrets it to this day.

Saints coach Sean Payton and GM Mickey Loomis did go for the deal, and a Super Bowl title later, the rest is history.

Imagine the selling strategy being devised right now by Johnny Manziel and his camp after the troubled party boy is released by the Cleveland Browns on March 8. The former Texas A&M Heisman Trophy winner will have to concoct a masterful sales pitch and spin to get serious consideration from another NFL club.

In spite of his checkered past and his chaotic performance on and off the field, Manziel gets media attention, sells tickets and would bring a certain buzz to any franchise. For those reasons (not good ones in my opinion), he will get another shot somewhere in the league.

Coaches at all levels are constantly selling, especially during the off-season and practice. And the successful ones are masters at it. How often have you heard a head coach or top coordinator utter the phrase “getting the players to buy in on our system”?

You can force feed a strategy or manner of execution. But it’s always more beneficial in the long run when the players truly understand it, agree with the process and “buy in.”

LSU coach Les Miles’ penchant for selling the Tigers program and securing the nation’s top-rated recruiting classes year in and year out probably helped save his job last season. Miles may not be the best strategist, on-field tactician and clock manager, but he is one hell of a salesman.

Jim Harbaugh is shaking things up at Michigan. The former Wolverine, who just completed his first year as head coach since he left the NFL’s 49ers, vaulted the Big Blue into the Top 10 rankings last season, putting his rebuilding plan three to four years ahead of schedule.

With a couple of swipes on his smartphone, Harbaugh rolled out the celebrity red carpet — it was probably blue and maize — and brought in former Michigan star alums Tom Brady and Derek Jeter for national high school signing day on campus a few weeks ago.

Putting your most famous Super Bowl and World Series champions next to starry eyed recruits who will brag about the meeting across the far reaches of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is a brilliant move, and something the late, great king of old school, Bo Schembechler,  would have applauded.

Harbaugh isn’t resting on his khaki laurels. He’s gotten under the skin of the almighty SEC by enlisting his assistant coaches to conduct Michigan coaching camps in southern locales that are hotbeds for four- and five-star high school talent.

The Wolverines are taking it one giant step further by moving a week of spring practice to Bradenton, Fla., during the university’s spring break off-week. The players won’t miss classes, and apparently no NCAA rules will be crossed in the process.

Imagine the cost and logistics of moving an entire college football team, staff and equipment from Ann Arbor, Mich., to the west coast of Florida for one week of spring drills. What better way to sell your brand of Big Ten football to players raised on the SEC? I’m surprised Ohio State coach Urban Meyer didn’t think of it first.

Selling the McNeese football brand and its storied tradition is one of the cornerstones of Lance Guidry’s platform as the Cowboys’ new head coach. Guidry has always been a recruiting juggernaut. He loves hitting the road and selling himself and the team he represents.

He’s been top grade wherever he’s been — McNeese, Miami of Ohio, Western Kentucky and back at McNeese. “I love recruiting,” he says. “I like the challenge of recruiting. I like trying to manipulate a situation and being able to get the one-up on somebody. A coach’s nature is to compete, and that’s our nature here at McNeese.”

McNeese’s recently completed sales season — or should I say recruiting period? — involved 21 high school players from as close as Lake Charles, Welsh and Oakdale to as far away as San Antonio, Slidell, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Among the class of 21 were five offensive linemen, six defensive backs, three receivers and two quarterbacks. These players corresponded to the team’s greatest needs, according to Guidry.

The energetic 45-year-old first-time college head coach put his selling skills up against one of the best recruiters in the country when Guidry sat down in the home of LSU defensive line coach Ed Orgeron.

Now, you have to realize Orgeron is a recruiting legend in college football. A savant of sorts. He’s so renowned he had a cameo appearance in the blockbuster football movie The Blind Side, in which he performed alongside Nick Saban. Both were trying to sell a young Michael Oher in the film.

Orgeron won the recruiting battle for Oher in the movie. He won a comparable battle in real life, as the star offensive lineman signed with Ole Miss, where Orgeron was the head coach at the time.

Guidry’s known Orgeron for a number of years. He was primarily at Orgeron’s home to sign Parker Orgeron, a 6-foot, 185-pound receiver from Mandeville High School. He ended up successfully recruiting both of Ed’s sons Parker and Cody, the latter a smallish 6-foot, 1-inch, 160-pound quarterback.

Guidry scored a hat trick. He closed on not one, but two, players and got the best in Cajun comfort food to seal the deal.

“Ed understands we win at McNeese and we are going to win. That was huge for both his sons. There were three or four of us there, and it was a great visit. I ate better than I have ever eaten in my life. It was fun. I was able to be myself. He’s a Cajun, I’m a Cajun. I didn’t have to really give a sales pitch. We talked about McNeese and what McNeese has to offer both his sons. [It] probably was one of the easier visits I have been in.”

Guidry’s made it clear the recent hiring of former Cowboys stars Zack Bronson, Kerry Joseph and Charlie Ayro as assistant coaches was done in part because these three McNeese Hall of Famers “can sell the McNeese tradition and being a Cowboy because they were all Cowboys.”

Selling the product and the brand that is McNeese football to prep recruits and to the increasingly important transfer players is nearly a full-time job for many coaches and critical to long-term success.

In some cases, Guidry and his staff were playing catch-up because of the departure of 10-year veteran head coach Matt Viator and four McNeese assistants to U.L.-Monroe.

There have been more than a few head-to-head recruiting battles against his old friend Viator, who Guidry said the only local board of players they (ULM) had was our board established when Viator was still McNeese’s head coach.

You could read between the lines that the competition was fierce, and things were spun to give McNeese the perception advantage when it came to selling a star recruit.

“It was tough,” said Guidry. “It was really tough. So we had to get very creative, and basically we told them what McNeese has to offer is we win football games here. We win championships. And if you look at the history of the program, you go back 25-35 years, it doesn’t matter who’s the head coach; doesn’t matter who the players are; you’re going to win here.”

Guidry and Viator remain close friends with a long history and strong bond. But Guidry realizes Viator is now a competitor on the recruiting trails, and knows all too well that for U.L.-M to be successful, it must recruit and secure athletes from south Louisiana and east Texas — regions that Viator knows like the back of his hand.

With that in mind, it didn’t take long for Guidry to fire the first shot aimed at the Warhawks across the bow.

“They’re selling dreams and hopes, whereas we’re selling reality.”

In the selling game, that’s called closing the deal.

Get Rick Sarro’s perspectives on sports on Soundoff 60, which airs Monday through Sunday nights at 9 pm on Suddenlink channel 60 and Saturday and Sunday mornings at 10 am as well.