Ole Miss Football: Why The Nutt Lawsuit Won’t Be Cataclysmic

Why Nutt Can’t Find A Gig

Ole Miss Rebels Football

Look, Nutt has had success at multiple universities in his career. I’ll be the first to admit that his first season in Oxford was downright magical. I mean they shocked the world by essentially dismantling Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl and were even a preseason top-10 team to start his second season.

From there, it goes downhill.  Ole Miss didn’t meet expectations in Nutt’s second season. A top 10 preseason team that would lose to a far less talented MSU team in the egg bowl and limp into another Cotton Bowl. I still don’t know how they won that Cotton Bowl.

Houston Dale Nutt, man that name suits him, actually cited the two cotton bowl victories in his lawsuit. We all know what happens next. Nutt’s rebel team won a whopping ONE conference game the next two seasons. The lone win was a 42-35 shootout in Oxford over an equally pitiful Kentucky Squad.

What were the losses over those 2 years? Jacksonville State (49-48 2OT) and Louisiana Tech (27-7 on homecoming) at home. In 2011, Ole Miss lost to Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and Mississippi State by a combined score of 91-23.

Wait, There Were Wins?

So, who did they manage to beat during this time? Ole Miss defeated Fresno State twice (shows just how terrible they were).  Ole Miss defeated Southern Illinois, Tulane, and UL-Lafayette once a piece during the span.  Oh, they also beat themselves in a Grove Bowl, which we will claim as a win just to put a Power-5 win on the board. (I’m kidding as considering that Ole Miss team a power-5 team is a stretch of epic proportions).

Houston is a major reason the NCAA capped scholarships as he was on the verge of having a farm system in Oxford.

Nutt claims the NOA doesn’t mention him and it doesn’t.  However, it does mention several members of his coaching staff.  The journalists always maintained the allegations from his days were from his staff, not him.  He actually has that in common with Freeze, no major violations have been committed by either.  However, Freeze was somehow charged with failure to monitor his program for isolated events.

Nutt Is Not Responsible?

Nutt’s staff did contribute to the most damning allegation against the football program. Academic Fraud.  Two of his staff members were setting up faux ACT testing centers, that is a very serious allegation.  Also, Ole Miss deserves to be punished for it and any other discretion that is proven to be true.  Yes, you could make a case the institution had no control.  I would call this a stretch, but I may be slightly biased here.  Anyways, back to ole Dale Jr, no not that Dale.

Reporting his staff members committed these violations and not him is not a smear campaign, I don’t care who you are. I fully believe Nutt had no idea of the academic violations going on at the time.

Nutt claims he left the Ole Miss football program in good standing, which is actually Fake News. Nutt’s final record of 24-26 is not the worst we’ve experienced, cough Ed Orgeron, but it is also misleading.  His win column is very front heavy, he was 18-8 in his first 2 seasons. During the final 2 traumatic seasons he lost 18 games and only won 6 times!