Houston Nutt Officially a Rebel
Houston Nutt is headed for Oxford, MS.
A few days ago, Houston Nutt was celebrating one of the best wins of his legacy at Arkansas by toppling LSU in OT and likely ending LSU’s bid for the National Championship. He resigned Monday and today he is the new coach for Ole Miss. Wow, what a couple of days.
Ole Miss Athletic director Pete Boone fired Ed Orgeron on Saturday following their narrow loss to Mississippi state. The Rebels had three straight losing seasons under Orgeron and Boone was under pressure to make a move after the Rebels were swept out of SEC competition losing all their conference games this season.
What’s odd about the hiring is that Arkansas’ season is still ongoing. They finished with a respectable 8-4 record and a likely Cotton Bowl appearance. But in this day and age, you go where the money is and that’s all that really matters. Ole Miss probably told Houston Nutt that if he didn’t accept a contract at this point, then they would look elsewhere.
And what about the move itself?? He’s going from one SEC team to another, Arkansas is probably better, and probably will be better going forward. Ole Miss has a strong tradition, but they’ve been terrible the past few year (I realize that much of that was probably Orgeron) and I don’t think Nutt alone is good enough to turn this thing around.
Much will depend on Nutt’s ability to recruit, and attract talent from the football rich state of Mississippi. If Nutt can keep some of that talent in-state, he could be successful. But he also has to compete with Sylvester Croom over at Starkville, and Croom has been slowly building the Bulldogs into a pretty decent SEC team.
Overall, it is a puzzling move, but again, it’s always about the benjamins and no doubt, Houston Nutt is about to get a nice bump in his salary after this season.
Arkansas, Ole Miss, Houston Nutt
December 12th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[...] especially offensively and with the resources he has at Arkansas, fans won’t even remember Houston Nutt’s name after next [...]