Lost in the shuffle of the Mark Richt hot-seat chatter of the last few weeks, is that there is another coach down in SEC country whose seat is just as smoldering as the maligned Georgia coach’s. That would be the man he’s facing this weekend, the Reverend Houston Nutt at Ole Miss.
And understand this: While the hotness of Nutt’s seat isn’t as apparent as Richt’s, it is there. After winning nine games in his first two seasons (thanks in large part to the bounty of talent that previous coach Ed Orgeron had recruited), the Rebels fell off the map last year, going 4-8. Included were just one conference win (against Kentucky), and even more embarrassingly, a season opening loss to FCS school Jacksonville State. Want to know the even scarier part? Had it not been for maligned Oregon transfer Jeremiah Masoli, things could’ve been even worse.
And this year things haven’t gotten much better, as the Rebels are off to a 1-2 start. The sole victory came over FCS opponent Southern Illinois (hey, at least they won their gimme FCS game this year, right?), which was sandwiched between losses to BYU on the opening weekend, and Vanderbilt Saturday. The loss to the Commodores was especially embarrassing, as the Rebels scored their only touchdown with just two minutes left in the game, after the final score was long in doubt. Again, against Vanderbilt, which- last time we checked- is hardly an SEC power.
All in all, Nutt’s time appears to be ticking in Oxford, and athletics director Pete Boone did little to quell the hot-seat talk, as he released a statement this afternoon.
In part, it read:
The fullness of the Ole Miss football experience that you deserve and have generously invested in, has not lived up to expectations recently. Coach Nutt and I met today and discussed the current state of Ole Miss football. Both of us are extremely disappointed in our performance this year. We agreed that to be successful, this disappointment must be met head on with solutions for improvement. We discussed several areas that needed improvement and I support Coach Nutt in his effort to correct those areas.
As I have said, Saturday’s performance and our running two-season SEC record are unacceptable. Our commitment to compete at a championship level is as strong as ever and we will succeed! We need your continued support of the team as Saturday is another SEC weekend and we need you here!
Needless to say, I’ve heard some ringing endorsements in my day. And umm, that isn’t one of them. At this point it seems as though it’s a matter of if, not when, Nutt will be leaving Oxford.
Understand that this probably all started after last year’s Vanderbilt, a game which I personally attended, and a game which left the locals so disgusted, that even then they were trying to figure out a way to run Nutt out of town. It was smack dab in the middle of a long, slow, decline of the program, which Nutt had brought back to respectable heights just about 18 months before.
However, following a surprisingly fun 2008 season that saw the Rebels win nine games, 2009 was seen as a disappointment. Sure Ole Miss matched that nine win total, but they also started the year ranked in the Top 10, reaching as high as No. 4 in the country before a loss to South Carolina, and were generally seen as a disappointment from there. Following the South Carolina game were losses Alabama, Auburn and an inexcusable defeat to first year Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen. Had it not been for a famous clock miscue against LSU, there would’ve been another loss on the schedule too.
Making matters worse, the 2009 season also saw a steady regression of a number of key players, including quarterback Jevan Snead. The junior signal-caller went from a 26 touchdown, 13 interception season in 2008, to just 20 and 20 in 2009, in the process going from “Heisman dark-horse,” to one of the most disappointing players in all of college football. In a twist fit for a Shakespearean play, Snead decided to leave the school following that season, went undrafted, and was last seen playing in an arena league. Seriously.
And of course to add insult to injury, it’s not as though Nutt has held the program to the highest moral standard either.
Over his nearly four years in Oxford, Nutt has brought in a ton of questionable characters, some like Masoli who’ve worked out, and quite a few who haven’t. Off the top of my head, the most infamous one was Jamar Hornsby who was arrested before playing a game in Oxford, for…are you ready for this…beating up a man at a McDonald’s drive-thru…with brass knuckles! Seriously, brass knuckles! You can’t make this stuff up! That was of course after Nutt took a chance on Hornsby to begin with, after he was thrown out of Florida’s football program for credit card fraud. For those who don’t remember, Hornsby made charges on the credit card of a dead former friend, which obviously isn’t funny and all. Just sad and pathetic really.
Still, this isn’t an indictment on Hornsby, and if anything, speaks more to the loose ship that Nutt has chosen to run in Oxford. He’s of course most famously made national headlines for his oversigning practices, one that saw his school receive 37 signed letters of intent in the class of 2009. Because of it, the SEC put oversinging legislation into play this summer.
Anyway, as fun as it is to rag on Nutt (we could seriously go on all night), this isn’t the time or place.
Just know that time is ticking on his stay in Oxford, and will likely be up by the end of the year.
If not sooner.
