At 9:47 a.m., Scottie Montgomery's hip vibrates.
The buzzing comes from the BlackBerry glued to the wide receiver coach's belt. A text message from a recruit has just arrived in his inbox.
As one of the Blue Devils' top talent hawks, Montgomery rarely gets a break from life on the recruiting trail.
"There are long nights for sure," said Montgomery, a former Duke receiver himself. "My wife gets upset because at 10:30, I'm recruiting. At 11:30, I'm recruiting. And at 2:30 in the morning, I'm trying to figure out how to recruit at 8 o'clock in the morning."
But the tireless drive and efforts of the 31-year-old have paid off. The lone holdover from former head coach Ted Roof's staff, Montgomery played a crucial role in a string of recent recruiting successes. He earned commitments from senior quarterback Thaddeus Lewis and incoming four-star running back Desmond Scott, and perhaps most important, Montgomery has been instrumental in revitalizing Duke's recruiting reputation inside North Carolina.
"Guys climb up the ladder in business because they're talented, and it's no different in our business," Cutcliffe said. "Scottie is going to be a head coach."
From the field to the porch
Montgomery knows how to sell Duke because he remembers how he became sold on his alma mater. A three-sport star from Lawndale, N.C., Montgomery had an array of schools recruiting him for football, and Duke was not high on his initial list.
His family's emphasis on education, however, eventually led Montgomery to settle on Duke. As soon as Montgomery arrived in Durham in the fall of 1996, his initial reservations faded away as quickly as he thrived on the field.
"Once I actually hit campus, the truth was there, and what I saw when I got there was great," said Montgomery, who went on to be a two-time team MVP and led the Blue Devils in receiving for three straight seasons. "Once I got here, it really opened my eyes to a totally different lifestyle, a totally different world and a world that made me understand that you could be anyone that you wanted to be."
Montgomery spent four years in the NFL, but he knew he wanted to end up on the sidelines after his professional career. A year and a half after retiring from playing, Montgomery began to work the phones, calling his contacts in college and pro football in search of an entry-level coaching opportunity. Roof offered Montgomery a chance to coach Duke's wide receivers after the 2005 season, and the opportunity to return to Duke was too good for Montgomery to pass up.
Full of energy in his first months on the job, Montgomery took a particular interest in recruiting. Montgomery begged Roof for a chance to recruit any sliver of North Carolina.
Instead, Montgomery was assigned South Florida, one of the country's hot beds for football talent. One of his first calls was to a quarterback prospect that many programs had dismissed as too short to start in a BCS conference.
Montgomery had a more optimistic opinion of Thaddeus Lewis. Instead of treating Lewis as just another prospect, Montgomery acted more like a friend.
"Coach Montgomery came down to Miami to see me, and he comes to the house and sits down to chill out with all of us on the porch," said Lewis, an All-ACC selection who is on pace to be a four-year starter. "There was me, a couple of my friends and my brother, and he is just interacting with the guys, and we're just sitting there and having a good time, laughing, joking around. For a coach to actually come do that, just come spend time with you, that means a lot. No other coaches came to just hang out with you in your home."
Lewis' story illustrates Montgomery's priority of building personal relationships with his recruits. He isn't looking for superficial interactions-which he calls "how are you doing?" relationships.
"Hopefully 10 years, 15 years from now, some of these guys have played in the National Football League and have families and have children," Montgomery said. "They'll remember me recruiting them and talking to them about my family, and the importance of being a great man, and the importance of taking care of business the right way."
"[He's] a young guy, a young African-American guy who can relate to you," said Lewis, who counts Montgomery as his most trusted confidante on the coaching staff. "You can talk to him about anything, and that's really one of the big things... because he was the guy that brought you to the program, that's the guy you actually feel comfortable [with] more so than other coaches."
New staff, new responsibilities
Montgomery's ability to relate didn't just impress recruits. It helped him keep his job.
After Roof was fired on November 26, 2007, Montgomery knew that his odds of staying at Duke were slim. Out of allegiance to the program, he still came to work each day during the University's three-week coaching search, visiting each Duke commit at least once a week. But when Cutcliffe was hired on December 15, the new head coach instructed former athletic director Joe Alleva to fire the remainder of the coaching staff.
Cutcliffe wanted to put together his staff, and instead of retaining coaches, he wanted to rehire them.
Cutcliffe met with Montgomery and three other assistants and he put them through a series of tests to prove their mettle. He asked them to accomplish small tasks like putting together contact lists and he sat down with them to discuss the state of the program.
Montgomery wasted little time in impressing the coach. When Cutcliffe asked for a contact list, Montgomery e-mailed a comprehensive list in five minutes. When Cutcliffe asked if he planned on using the Duke job as a stepping stone, Montgomery responded by affirming his commitment to the program.
"I'm a big believer in people that are optimists and positive, and he was the most positive about the opportunity at Duke," Cutcliffe said. "I would have made him work regardless if the position didn't fit. I would have had him stay."
Montgomery assumed his former job-with enhanced responsibilities. After he helped retain all but one of Duke's Class of 2008 commitments, Montgomery was rewarded with the role he begged for years earlier: a chance to recruit his home state.
Bull of the city
Montgomery's new location was even more critical than South Florida. He had the task of recruiting the Triangle region and trapping the talent right in Duke's backyard.
From that talent pool, perhaps the top prospect in the Class of 2009 was Hillside High School's Desmond Scott, a four-star running back from Durham. Scott had a lukewarm opinion of Duke when it pursued him in 2007, and in June 2008, he made an oral commitment to play for Rutgers. Still, the commitment didn't deter Montgomery. After all, Duke hadn't appealed to him initially, either.
"When I first started recruiting Dez, a lot of people were very skeptical that I was spending as much time writing, recruiting and doing the things that you have to do to be a great recruiter, because of his offer list," Montgomery said.
Montgomery saw his opening at the start of July, when Scott decided he wanted to play closer to home and decommitted from Rutgers. Montgomery recognized that there was no place closer than Duke, and he worked with Cutcliffe to "stay the course" in their pitch to Scott. They didn't want to make grandiose or unfulfillable promises, like other programs.
Their down-to-earth approach appealed to Scott, who chose the Blue Devils on July 24.
"He didn't sugarcoat anything," Scott said of Montgomery. "I knew exactly where he was coming from. He told me that the ball was in my court, basically, on where I wanted to play and if I would be on the field freshman year. He was very straightforward, and I liked that from a coach."
The signing of Scott-Duke's biggest coup since it landed five-star lineman Vince Oghobaase in 2004-marks what Montgomery hopes will be a long string of recruiting successes ahead. Last year's improvement in the win column, coupled with Cutcliffe's optimism as the face of the program, has provided a lift to Duke's recruiting efforts and has made Montgomery's job of selling the program easier, he said.
"It's basically like going out in the middle of the heat, in the hottest part of the summer, and there are five guys selling water," Montgomery said. "They're all selling water out there, and all doing a great job. But all of a sudden a guy shows up, and he has lemonade. And it's a little sweeter, and it has a little bit more of appeal to it. People want what we have."
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