Tales from the road

— -- With national signing day little more than a week away, coaches are crisscrossing the country to lock down key commitments. It's during this time -- at in-home visits -- that anything can happen. While making last-minute pitches to recruits and their families, coaches will do almost anything to secure a signature. Whether that means choking down some bad food or doing whatever it takes to meet a recruit, coaches have great stories from this time of year. Here are some of those stories:

A coach. A coach and his car. And locking the keys inside.

"I remember going on the road with Coach [Fred] Goldsmith to recruit Brendon Fitzgerald out of Dallas when I was at Rice. I meet up with Coach Goldsmith at a filling station in Dallas near the airport. I'm filling up the car, Coach jumps in the car, but then he sees there's a McDonald's across the street. He hollers out 'I'm going to go get a quick burger.' The only problem is that I left the keys in the ignition because he was in the car. It was one of those really, really nice rental cars in the early '90s that the doors locked when you shut the door. So I'm filling up the gas tank, he shuts the door and I'm like, 'No, Coach.' The keys get locked in the car.

"We were recruiting a kid and the head coach and the assistant went in for breakfast with me. For breakfast they had boiled fish. You don't want to offend the family and not eat it, so you're sitting there and scarfing down boiled fish at 8 o'clock in the morning. That's what you do doing the final few weeks. You'll do about anything and everything to make a good impression, including eating boiled fish for breakfast." -- TCU co-offensive coordinator Sonny Cumbie

Where am I?

"Last week, I was in San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and New Orleans. All those cities equal different hotel rooms each night. I made the mistake of going to 527 one night when that was my room last night. Trying to get my key to work at 10 p.m., and a lady comes to the door in curlers. Not a pretty sight for her or me." -- Oklahoma State cornerbacks coach Van Malone

Ants in your pants

"When I was at Tennessee, I had been recruiting in Buffalo, N.Y., and it was very cold. I had on wool pants and a big coat. I go to South Georgia. It's amazing. It's 19 degrees. But I was dressed OK, so I go in a home. It's a modest home, like I was raised in. There was a big space heater and one place for me to sit. The couch was covered in plastic. There used to be a thick plastic you put on furniture, and a lot of people kept it on there. I sit down, and it's so cold outside that in the house, that every bug in the neighborhood had decided to come inside. I'm trying to have a conversation, and I have roaches crawling up my pants. I'm trying to shake them. They're crawling across my back. I'm trying to remain focused and sell. And they acted as if, God bless them, they had never seen any of these bugs, that none of this is going on."

-- Duke coach David Cutcliffe