<noscript><h1>McCready: No simple reason for Nutt's failure</h1></noscript><p class="byline">Neal McCready
Columnist</p>
<div id="relatedcontainer"><div id="related" class="horizfade"><div><p class="headlinetop">Related Links:</p>Box score</div><p class="headlinetop">Talk about it in The Grove </p></div></div> OXFORD, Miss. -- It's easy to say Houston Nutt's downfall began with the embarrassing collapse against Jacksonville State in 2010.
It might be even easier to pinpoint the 2009 Egg Bowl loss at Mississippi State as the genesis of a rapid downhill spiral.
<table width="413" align="Left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td width="407">
</td><td rowspan="4" width="6">
</td></tr><tr><td align="right"><font face="verdana" size="1">Dave Childers</font></td></tr><tr><td height="3">
</td></tr><tr><td align="center"><font size="1">Former
Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt tries to encourage the Rebels' offense in a
November 2009 loss at Mississippi State. Dating back to that defeat in
Starkville, Ole Miss lost 14 of its last 15 SEC games under Nutt's
direction. </font></td></tr></tbody></table>Either
of those two conclusions, however, would be too simplistic. One game,
no matter how disastrous it may have been, isn't the root cause for a
program's implosion.
Instead, it was a combination of poor
recruiting, a lack of discipline, inconsistent preparation and pure
paranoia that led to Nutt's downfall.
Nutt was relieved of
his duties Sunday, two days after a 30-13 loss to Kentucky that dropped
Ole Miss to 2-7 overall and 0-6 in the Southeastern Conference. Dating
back to the aforementioned Egg Bowl loss in Starkville, Ole Miss has
lost 14 of its last 15 SEC games, including a school-record 12 league
losses in a row.
The combination of 20/20 hindsight and a flux
capacitor time machine couldn't have predicted Nutt's era in Oxford
would end before basketball season began. However, the decline was
rapid, setting the stage for a tumultuous, chaotic final three weeks of
the 2011 season.
At the end of the 2008 season, when Ole Miss
reeled off consecutive wins over Arkansas, Auburn, Louisiana-Monroe,
LSU, Mississippi State and Texas Tech, there weren't many teams
nationally better than the Rebels. That was inarguable.
The pollsters agreed, ranking Ole Miss in the top 10 of the 2009 preseason polls. Sports Illustrated
agreed as well, putting the Rebels on one of its geographical covers of
the magazine's college football preview edition. Tru TV had a thing for
Ole Miss, too. Nutt agreed to give inside access to a production crew
from the network for a reality show about college football that would
focus on the Rebels.
A week into camp, Nutt pulled the plug on
the idea. I remember everyone laughing it off, but I told ESPN.com's
Chris Low on one of his visits to camp that August that I took the
decision as a sign of fear, an indication that the pressure of the
spotlight was cracking the Rebels at their very foundation.
I
was proven right. The 2009 season went down in the record books as a
9-4 campaign that included a win over Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl.
At first blush, it appears to be successful. Upon analysis, however,
that season was a lost opportunity.
A questionable offensive
gameplan killed the Rebels on a Thursday night in South Carolina. The
offense failed to show up in a home loss to eventual national champion
Alabama. After strong performances in wins over Arkansas and Tennessee,
the Rebels were oddly flat in a loss at Auburn. Then, after a
bounce-back win over LSU in Oxford, the Rebels were stunned in
Starkville. That loss cost Ole Miss a trip to the Capital One Bowl to
play Penn State, gave new Bulldogs coach Dan Mullen bragging rights and
momentum and was the beginning of the SEC malaise that ultimately cost
Nutt his job.
Since that day, Ole Miss' only reputable wins
have come against a distracted Oklahoma State team and a below-average
Kentucky outfit. The 2010 season-opening loss to Jacksonville State
humiliated the program, as did consecutive losses to Vanderbilt, a
blowout defeat at Tennessee last November and second-half debacles
against Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn and Kentucky this fall.
The
mistakes in recruiting have become obvious. Nutt failed to sign a
quarterback he could build his program around. He inherited Jevan Snead,
rolled the dice for a year on Jeremiah Masoli and then turned again to
junior college transfers. His high school quarterback signees _ Nathan
Stanley, Raymond Cotton and Maikhail Miller _ are either gone or
grayshirting. The lone quarterback commitment in the current recruiting
class, C.J. Beathard, is a project with no significant offers from
BCS-level programs.
Program insiders insist Nutt became
obsessed with landing the next Felix Jones at Ole Miss. Ironically,
while Nutt was consumed with speed, he recruited a team that observers
have labeled slow for the past two years.
He landed Enrique
Davis in his first Ole Miss class, and at the time, it appeared to be a
coup. Davis has been serviceable, but he's never emerged as a star. When
Davis and Brandon Bolden leave after this season, they'll leave one
running back _ Jeff Scott _ who has remotely proven he can play in the
SEC. In a league where other programs have stables of runners, that
situation is inexplicable and unforgiveable.
Last recruiting
season, Ole Miss put all its focus on Boynton Beach, Fla., running back
Tre Mason. The Rebels thought they had him wrapped up, but when Auburn
lost out on a couple of running back targets, the Tigers made Mason a
priority and Ole Miss' chances were stopped cold. The Rebels had no
backup plan.
The list goes on and on. The Rebels lost three
potential defensive stars _ Clarence Jackson, Tony Grimes and Delvin
Jones _ to off-the-field issues. There were character flags on all three
during the recruiting process. The Rebels rolled the dice and lost.
Four-star wide receiver Patrick Patterson never impacted the program, at
least not positively. Z Mason never developed as the tight end Ole Miss
believed he would be, and he left early. Rodney Scott transferred after
last season, never having come close to justifying the hype that
accompanied his signing. Nutt didn't want to sign Tig Barksdale, but he
gave into pressure. Sure enough, Barksdale was a disaster and a
distraction. Every program has attrition; under Nutt, Ole Miss' came in
bunches.
Over the past few weeks, as the losses began to pile
up and the program came under intense scrutiny, those cracks in the
proverbial foundation widened and the structure began to collapse around
Nutt.
Nutt and athletic director Pete Boone have never
peacefully coexisted. Program insiders have insisted for years that
Boone micromanages the program. They speak of him in adversarial terms.
As I've written previously, Boone certainly deserves blame for that
situation, but to put the entirety of that fault on Boone's shoulders is
ridiculous and, more to the point, wrong.
According to
sources, Boone frequently tried to clear the air between he and Nutt
early in the coach's tenure in Oxford. Each time, per those sources,
Nutt dismissed any talk of trouble, baffling Boone. Nutt doesn't like
confrontation, his friends have said many times, but situations never
were dealt with. Nutt frequently complained about Ole Miss' lack of a
training table for athletes. Sources close to the program, however, have
insisted that Boone offered to provide that for the football program.
Nutt, according to sources, declined, wanting instead to keep providing
stipends for his players. The NCAA, it should be noted, allows one or
the other and not both.
Nutt's inner circle seemed to be
composed of long-time aides and boosters who kissed up to maintain their
level of access. Everyone else was treated with a certain degree of
mistrust. Media types who covered Nutt at Arkansas refer to his inner
circle as paranoid. That paranoia was readily apparent on numerous
occasions.
Nutt played media favorites, too. In the spirit of
full disclosure, I knew immediately I would always be viewed cautiously.
In the weeks before I started at Rivals.com, I visited Nutt in his
office. Less than a minute into the conversation, he asked if I had once
had a radio show in Mobile. I knew that he knew I had hosted a show
there; he had been a guest on more than one occasion. I knew then the
proverbial waters had been poisoned.
Last November, after
Tennessee's mauling of the Rebels in Knoxville, multiple sources told me
Nutt would have to make staff changes after the season. I wrote the
story. Some 48 hours later, Nutt reminded Ole Miss fans in a bizarre
press conference that it had been 50 years since the Rebels had won
back-to-back Jan. 1 bowl games. A day later, he approached me at the
beginning of practice, questioning my story. I asked if he had read it.
He answered negatively. So I pulled out my phone and read it to him. He
clearly had been told my report said something it didn't.
That was par for the course. Like many coaches, Nutt insulated himself,
only Nutt did it to ridiculous extremes. In my opinion, people in his
inner circle frequently misled him in an attempt to further their own
agendas and gain more access to the coach and his program.
In
the final days, when it became brutally obvious that Nutt's dismissal
was likely imminent, there was no one who could save him. Some
message-board posters called for fans to be good little Rebels, but no
one presented an impassioned defense of Nutt. Interestingly, the one
media outlet that got close with the coach over the past four years
didn't even attempt to come to his aid in the final weeks.
So
it ended today with a whimper, with three weeks of the season remaining
and with a program in relative chaos. All that's known of Nutt's future
is Ole Miss owes him millions and almost four years after he raised the
hopes of a fan base desperate for a winner, the football program he
leaves behind looks very similar to the disaster that he inherited.
Columnist</p>
<div id="relatedcontainer"><div id="related" class="horizfade"><div><p class="headlinetop">Related Links:</p>Box score</div><p class="headlinetop">Talk about it in The Grove </p></div></div> OXFORD, Miss. -- It's easy to say Houston Nutt's downfall began with the embarrassing collapse against Jacksonville State in 2010.
It might be even easier to pinpoint the 2009 Egg Bowl loss at Mississippi State as the genesis of a rapid downhill spiral.
<table width="413" align="Left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td width="407">
Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt tries to encourage the Rebels' offense in a
November 2009 loss at Mississippi State. Dating back to that defeat in
Starkville, Ole Miss lost 14 of its last 15 SEC games under Nutt's
direction. </font></td></tr></tbody></table>Either
of those two conclusions, however, would be too simplistic. One game,
no matter how disastrous it may have been, isn't the root cause for a
program's implosion.
Instead, it was a combination of poor
recruiting, a lack of discipline, inconsistent preparation and pure
paranoia that led to Nutt's downfall.
Nutt was relieved of
his duties Sunday, two days after a 30-13 loss to Kentucky that dropped
Ole Miss to 2-7 overall and 0-6 in the Southeastern Conference. Dating
back to the aforementioned Egg Bowl loss in Starkville, Ole Miss has
lost 14 of its last 15 SEC games, including a school-record 12 league
losses in a row.
The combination of 20/20 hindsight and a flux
capacitor time machine couldn't have predicted Nutt's era in Oxford
would end before basketball season began. However, the decline was
rapid, setting the stage for a tumultuous, chaotic final three weeks of
the 2011 season.
At the end of the 2008 season, when Ole Miss
reeled off consecutive wins over Arkansas, Auburn, Louisiana-Monroe,
LSU, Mississippi State and Texas Tech, there weren't many teams
nationally better than the Rebels. That was inarguable.
The pollsters agreed, ranking Ole Miss in the top 10 of the 2009 preseason polls. Sports Illustrated
agreed as well, putting the Rebels on one of its geographical covers of
the magazine's college football preview edition. Tru TV had a thing for
Ole Miss, too. Nutt agreed to give inside access to a production crew
from the network for a reality show about college football that would
focus on the Rebels.
A week into camp, Nutt pulled the plug on
the idea. I remember everyone laughing it off, but I told ESPN.com's
Chris Low on one of his visits to camp that August that I took the
decision as a sign of fear, an indication that the pressure of the
spotlight was cracking the Rebels at their very foundation.
I
was proven right. The 2009 season went down in the record books as a
9-4 campaign that included a win over Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl.
At first blush, it appears to be successful. Upon analysis, however,
that season was a lost opportunity.
A questionable offensive
gameplan killed the Rebels on a Thursday night in South Carolina. The
offense failed to show up in a home loss to eventual national champion
Alabama. After strong performances in wins over Arkansas and Tennessee,
the Rebels were oddly flat in a loss at Auburn. Then, after a
bounce-back win over LSU in Oxford, the Rebels were stunned in
Starkville. That loss cost Ole Miss a trip to the Capital One Bowl to
play Penn State, gave new Bulldogs coach Dan Mullen bragging rights and
momentum and was the beginning of the SEC malaise that ultimately cost
Nutt his job.
Since that day, Ole Miss' only reputable wins
have come against a distracted Oklahoma State team and a below-average
Kentucky outfit. The 2010 season-opening loss to Jacksonville State
humiliated the program, as did consecutive losses to Vanderbilt, a
blowout defeat at Tennessee last November and second-half debacles
against Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn and Kentucky this fall.
The
mistakes in recruiting have become obvious. Nutt failed to sign a
quarterback he could build his program around. He inherited Jevan Snead,
rolled the dice for a year on Jeremiah Masoli and then turned again to
junior college transfers. His high school quarterback signees _ Nathan
Stanley, Raymond Cotton and Maikhail Miller _ are either gone or
grayshirting. The lone quarterback commitment in the current recruiting
class, C.J. Beathard, is a project with no significant offers from
BCS-level programs.
Program insiders insist Nutt became
obsessed with landing the next Felix Jones at Ole Miss. Ironically,
while Nutt was consumed with speed, he recruited a team that observers
have labeled slow for the past two years.
He landed Enrique
Davis in his first Ole Miss class, and at the time, it appeared to be a
coup. Davis has been serviceable, but he's never emerged as a star. When
Davis and Brandon Bolden leave after this season, they'll leave one
running back _ Jeff Scott _ who has remotely proven he can play in the
SEC. In a league where other programs have stables of runners, that
situation is inexplicable and unforgiveable.
Last recruiting
season, Ole Miss put all its focus on Boynton Beach, Fla., running back
Tre Mason. The Rebels thought they had him wrapped up, but when Auburn
lost out on a couple of running back targets, the Tigers made Mason a
priority and Ole Miss' chances were stopped cold. The Rebels had no
backup plan.
The list goes on and on. The Rebels lost three
potential defensive stars _ Clarence Jackson, Tony Grimes and Delvin
Jones _ to off-the-field issues. There were character flags on all three
during the recruiting process. The Rebels rolled the dice and lost.
Four-star wide receiver Patrick Patterson never impacted the program, at
least not positively. Z Mason never developed as the tight end Ole Miss
believed he would be, and he left early. Rodney Scott transferred after
last season, never having come close to justifying the hype that
accompanied his signing. Nutt didn't want to sign Tig Barksdale, but he
gave into pressure. Sure enough, Barksdale was a disaster and a
distraction. Every program has attrition; under Nutt, Ole Miss' came in
bunches.
Over the past few weeks, as the losses began to pile
up and the program came under intense scrutiny, those cracks in the
proverbial foundation widened and the structure began to collapse around
Nutt.
Nutt and athletic director Pete Boone have never
peacefully coexisted. Program insiders have insisted for years that
Boone micromanages the program. They speak of him in adversarial terms.
As I've written previously, Boone certainly deserves blame for that
situation, but to put the entirety of that fault on Boone's shoulders is
ridiculous and, more to the point, wrong.
According to
sources, Boone frequently tried to clear the air between he and Nutt
early in the coach's tenure in Oxford. Each time, per those sources,
Nutt dismissed any talk of trouble, baffling Boone. Nutt doesn't like
confrontation, his friends have said many times, but situations never
were dealt with. Nutt frequently complained about Ole Miss' lack of a
training table for athletes. Sources close to the program, however, have
insisted that Boone offered to provide that for the football program.
Nutt, according to sources, declined, wanting instead to keep providing
stipends for his players. The NCAA, it should be noted, allows one or
the other and not both.
Nutt's inner circle seemed to be
composed of long-time aides and boosters who kissed up to maintain their
level of access. Everyone else was treated with a certain degree of
mistrust. Media types who covered Nutt at Arkansas refer to his inner
circle as paranoid. That paranoia was readily apparent on numerous
occasions.
Nutt played media favorites, too. In the spirit of
full disclosure, I knew immediately I would always be viewed cautiously.
In the weeks before I started at Rivals.com, I visited Nutt in his
office. Less than a minute into the conversation, he asked if I had once
had a radio show in Mobile. I knew that he knew I had hosted a show
there; he had been a guest on more than one occasion. I knew then the
proverbial waters had been poisoned.
Last November, after
Tennessee's mauling of the Rebels in Knoxville, multiple sources told me
Nutt would have to make staff changes after the season. I wrote the
story. Some 48 hours later, Nutt reminded Ole Miss fans in a bizarre
press conference that it had been 50 years since the Rebels had won
back-to-back Jan. 1 bowl games. A day later, he approached me at the
beginning of practice, questioning my story. I asked if he had read it.
He answered negatively. So I pulled out my phone and read it to him. He
clearly had been told my report said something it didn't.
That was par for the course. Like many coaches, Nutt insulated himself,
only Nutt did it to ridiculous extremes. In my opinion, people in his
inner circle frequently misled him in an attempt to further their own
agendas and gain more access to the coach and his program.
In
the final days, when it became brutally obvious that Nutt's dismissal
was likely imminent, there was no one who could save him. Some
message-board posters called for fans to be good little Rebels, but no
one presented an impassioned defense of Nutt. Interestingly, the one
media outlet that got close with the coach over the past four years
didn't even attempt to come to his aid in the final weeks.
So
it ended today with a whimper, with three weeks of the season remaining
and with a program in relative chaos. All that's known of Nutt's future
is Ole Miss owes him millions and almost four years after he raised the
hopes of a fan base desperate for a winner, the football program he
leaves behind looks very similar to the disaster that he inherited.