Lattimore's mom compares recruiting tactics (AU/USCe)

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Great read Gamecock star's mom contrasts recruiting of Auburn, South Caroli Reply
Gamecock star's mom contrasts recruiting of Auburn, South Carolina
Thayer Evans is the Senior College Football Writer for FOXSports.com. He previously wrote for The New York Times and Houston Chronicle, and also has written for various other publications, including The Economist, USA Today and The Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter.

PRINT RSS 1 comments »Updated Dec 4, 2010 12:35 AM ET
Yolanda Smith has a unique perspective on Saturday’s SEC championship game between Auburn and South Carolina.



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She’ll be in the stands at the Georgia Dome to watch her son, Marcus Lattimore, South Carolina’s freshman-sensation tailback, whose college decision last February came down to an intense recruiting battle between the Gamecocks and Auburn.

She is fiercely protective of her son, who is third in the SEC in rushing yards. So much so that being in “super-protect-your-son-mode” had her struggling with a cold earlier this week.

And with the father of Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton making headlines recently for having shopped his son to Mississippi State in a play-for-pay scheme, Smith is a college football star’s parent who refreshingly stands for integrity. She’s the mother feared by coaches willing to break NCAA rules.

“I guess you could label me as an 'I’ll tell on you' type of person,” says Smith, a court clerk, who works in Spartanburg County’s warrants division in South Carolina.

Smith has proven that. When attractive University of Tennessee hostesses attended one of her son’s high school football games last season at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., she had her son discuss it with The New York Times.

Because there’s an unwritten code of silence among recruits, that wasn’t a popular decision among two of his Byrnes High teammates, who were also being recruited by Tennessee and refused to talk publicly about the hostesses. But that didn’t stop Smith and Lattimore, the Class of 2010’s top-ranked high school tailback, from discussing the matter with an NCAA investigator.

So when Smith talks, we should all listen, carefully, especially when it comes to her thoughts on the differences between the way her son was recruited by Auburn and South Carolina.

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