Sporting News weighs in on Nutt

I know, I know. the national media doesn't get it.
As already posted Doyle went to town today as well...

Nutt proving his worth at Ole Miss

Matt Hayes

One by one they tried. The guy from the local fishwrap to the guy from the newspaper of record.
The coach with the soap opera story just had to spill about leaving Arkansas for Ole Miss, about rolling into Fayetteville this weekend to face his old team and a few skeletons.
Only the coach with so much to gain had so little to say on Wednesday’s SEC conference call. The past doesn’t mean anything to Houston Nutt these days. Or so he says.
One thing that hasn’t changed from last year to this fall?
“Everybody wants to win yesterday,” Nutt says. Amen, brother.
But don’t think this game against Arkansas doesn’t hold extra juice for Nutt, who poured a decade of his life into coaching the Razorbacks. He changed a culture of losing and was instrumental in the program’s rise within the SEC.
So when it all unraveled last year, when a few hotshot recruits essentially brought a program to its knees and a fan base to infighting and bickering, enough was enough and he walked away.
He didn’t talk about it on the conference call, but he was perfectly clear when I visited with him this spring.
“It was a bad deal for everyone involved,” Nutt said.
Consider the fallout: Nutt lost the one job he never wanted to leave. Quarterback Mitch Mustain is playing 1,500 miles from home after transferring to USC, and may never start a game for the Trojans. And now the Razorbacks are starting over with coach Bobby Petrino; a horrible mess of a team figuring out a new coach and a new system and a new way of life in the meatgrinder that is the SEC.
No coaching change is easy, but the changes that are hardest are the changes that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
“I wasn’t looking to leave, I can assure you of that,” Nutt said this spring. “We all want to be at a place where you’re wanted, where you feel part of something, where everyone is working toward the same goals.”
Don’t think this game doesn’t mean anything.
Nutt did more with less at Arkansas, won more games he shouldn’t have, because his teams were better prepared than the team across the line. He walked into the definition of losing at Ole Miss — a school that hadn’t won an SEC game since 2006 and was 3-21 in the league the previous three seasons.
If the Rebels (3-4) beat his old team Saturday, they’ll be .500 in the last week of October for the first time since 2003. Ole Miss’ four losses are by a combined 19 points, including last week’s 24-20 loss to No. 2 Alabama with the Rebels driving in Tide territory during the last minute of the game.
I could throw out more numbers to support the case that everyone already knows: The guy can flat- out coach. It took all of five weeks this season to reinforce it.
Ole Miss arrived in Gainesville last month as a heavy underdog to No. 4 Florida, and left with what has become so very typical of Nutt-coached teams: big wins in big games of little hope. Meanwhile, Arkansas was losing by 42 to then- No.7 Texas that same day.
Late in Wednesday’s conference call, Nutt was asked what kind of reception he expected this weekend in Fayetteville.
“I have no idea,” Nutt said. “No idea.”
It’ll be a lot worse when Ole Miss beats Arkansas for the first time since 2003—and for the first of many to come.

mhayes@sportingnews.com