Houston, We Had Problems... But Not Too Many

Of all the coaches who stepped down from their posts over the past 72 hours or so, Houston Nutt commanded the biggest spotlight with his refusal to return to the Arkansas Razorbacks. It's worth looking back on a 10-year career that will be discussed for some time to come.

It wasn't, isn't, and probably never will be easy to agree when assessing the quality of Houston Nutt's decade in Fayetteville as the Boss Hog. The man who once quarterbacked for Frank Broyles--just before the legend stepped away from the sideline and joined Keith Jackson in the broadcast booth--fashioned a body of work that fragmented a fan base and perplexed every passionate Pig partisan at some point in time. Detractors and supporters alike were never too comfortable over the past ten years, because Houston--while not a tough Nutt to crack--was certainly a tough Nutt to get a handle on.

It will always remain difficult to Hog-tie this particular coach's legacy and put it in its proper perspective, because there are aspects of college football that coaches simply can't control. This is the inconvenient yet undeniable truth that ravenous fans are never able to appreciate. In fact, the fragile and frail nature of this sport--while increasing over time as the pressures on young men mount--is being less and less understood by the people who so desperately want to taste gridiron glory at the most elevated levels of collegiate competition.

Houston Nutt's career at Arkansas, if you want to soberly and cerebrally dissect it from a football-only standpoint, should probably be defined--for better or worse--by quarterback Matt Jones. That simple statement should tell you all you need to know about the Houston Nutt era in Arkansas, because Jones' own career was as complex and confusing as the reign of the man who coached him for four seasons.

In Jones, Nutt encountered the kind of player that classically illustrates the potential and peril of a college football head coaching job. Young men are wondrously talented, sometimes spectacularly so, but since coaches are not gods or messiahs in 99.9 percent of all situations (it's the one truth fans simply have to realize if this punishing industry is to regain precious yet currently absent vestiges of humanity and decency), their players will inevitably make mistakes. In some cases, those mistakes continue no matter how hard a coach might try to rein in a bucking bronco of a boy whose flair is equal parts fearsome football force and failure-facilitating flaw. Matt Jones was that kind of player for Houston Nutt: the young quarterback's improvisational ability was both his great stength and his biggest downfall. Accordingly, Nutt was never out of a game when down, but never safe in games he led. His hold on the hearts of Hogs was totally tethered to the trapeze artist wearing jersey No. 9. Some days, Jones pulled off the act, and sometimes, the awesome athlete with the balky brain would fall to the ground hard. It was always entertaining, but it ruined the cardiovascular health of a state that loves its barbecue to be accompanied by wins on Saturdays in Autumn. Matt Jones would send you into flights of extreme ecstasy in one second, and then leave you foaming at the mouth and fuming in frustration just a few moments later. He was that kind of quarterback, a walking embodiment of a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality on a football field. Jones was simultaneously the best player Nutt ever could have hoped to recruit at quarterback, and the worst player Nutt ever could have hoped to coach at that very same position. The uneven existence produced by the Jones-Nutt partnership is what must make it so difficult for Razorback rooters to accurately assess the career of their now-departed coach, who quickly landed in Oxford as the ruling Rebel at Ole Miss.

The larger reason why Arkansas never won the SEC (despite coming awfully close a number of times, which is pretty darn good when you consider the presence of LSU, Auburn and Alabama in the SEC West) was that the Hogs never found a legendary quarterback. Jones could have been that guy, but the trademark inconsistency of Nutt's potential-filled pupil prevented Arkansas from entering the promised land. Clint Stoerner--had it not been for one fumble in Knoxville in November of 1998--could have led the Razorbacks to Hog Heaven, but his generally impressive career--the best of any signal caller in the Nutt era--fell just short of attaining total greatness. Robert Johnson and Casey Dick, in recent years, simply weren't gifted enough to complement the power running game of Darren McFadden, which had already been enhanced by the change-of-pace potency of Felix Jones. (Put a Stoerner or a Matt Jones on the past few Razorback teams, and an SEC title surely would have arrived. Alas, life doesn't work out that conveniently.) And then, of course, Mitch Mustain--in a soap opera that the striking Hollywood writers could have made into a new prime-time program--eluded Nutt after one very stormy and tumultuous year. Partly through his own mistakes and partly because 20-year-old males are difficult to teach, Houston Nutt never found the breakthrough player at quarterback who, combined with the consistently outstanding offensive lines he produced, would have turned Arkansas from a very solid SEC program into something really special. The quarterback position gave Arkansas fans a taste of what could be, but it never quite delivered the goods. In many ways, his struggles with his quarterbacks led many Arkansas fans and national observers to overlook and underappreciate the phenomenal job Nutt did as a developer of offensive lines and running attacks. What the Denver Broncos have done with their offensive lines over the years in the NFL, the Arkansas Razorbacks have done with their Hog-mollies in the college game. But since the Golden Boy never quite emerged under center, Arkansas--so good in its best moments--found some way to get dumped at the altar in a high-stakes showdown.

Houston Nutt should ultimately be remembered at Arkansas as a coach who--while very inconsistent and often baffling (think of him as Les Miles Lite) as a late-game manager and strategist--was a superb technician who had his teams ready to play coming out of the tunnel. Nutt was one of those coaches who would bring a great game plan to the ballpark and motivate his teams extremely well, only to then falter and fumble once the script got knocked off course. His Arkansas teams were amped-up and excited to play football, but those same passionate players became all too susceptible to negative swings in fortune and momentum. This past year's game against Kentucky--in which a single play, a 66-yard fumble return by the Wildcats, totally turned around a game the Hogs had been dominating--was a particularly illustrative case in point. Nutt didn't coach poorly in that game, but the fact remains that his teams--like most others in college football--lacked that extra measure of iron determination needed to overcome adversity and turn an 8-4 season into a 10-2 campaign.

When all is said and done, however, the verdict on Nutt's reign with the Razorbacks should be very favorable, and one hopes that history will be accordingly wise in its assessment of this proud, flesh-and-blood Arkansas man who spilled his guts for the school and state he loved. Arkansas is not LSU or Bama or Auburn; the fans in Hog country--as is the case with dozens of other fan bases across America--need to realize their place in the college football pecking order... not out of a misguided sense that they should accept mediocrity (that would be a profound misreading of such a statement), but because coaches should not be punished for producing a body of work that, when measured by larger historical standards, maintains or even slightly increases the stature of a program. Perhaps someone else will deliver Arkansas its first-ever SEC title; but on a larger level, Houston Nutt took what Danny Ford gave him in 1997 and made it unquestionably better over the next ten seasons. Yes, it's understandable to see why Nutt might have failed in an immediate sense, but from a more distant and far-reaching perspective, there's absolutely no doubt that Houston D. Nutt improved he program he inherited a decade ago.

If you want to blame Nutt for giving Arkansas a vision of the promised land but then not getting there in the end, go ahead. Just realize, however, that as long as college football is played, there will be Matt Joneses who will break your heart just as surely as they will fill your veins with excitement. There's a reason why this sport isn't played by professionals; if we allow the mistakes of young people to define coaches who generally improve the programs they lead, we're expecting too much of the sideline sultans in this sport. Such is the cancer that's eating at the coaching fraternity from the inflamed fan bases who grow increasingly unreasonable and impatient as the years go by; such was the heat applied to a hyper Hog who hightalied it out of town and drove to the Grove in Oxford.

Houston Nutt was a flawed coach--there's ample evidence to support such a claim. But when the scales even out and the long run of history is calmly considered, there's no way you can say that this resolute Razorback failed in his ten-year career in Fayetteville.