Ole Miss’ Nutt to Resign After Season at BetLM

Ole Miss’ Nutt to Resign After Season

OXFORD, Miss. – Hous­ton Nutt came to Mis­sis­sippi with the goal of becom­ing the first coach to lead the Rebels to the South­east­ern Con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship game.

It didn’t hap­pen, far from it. Over the past year, the Rebels couldn’t win a sin­gle SEC game.

“The thing about the SEC that I know,” Nutt said. “They pay you to win.”

By that stan­dard, he didn’t earn his salary over the past two sea­sons. That’s why Nutt said Mon­day he wasn’t sur­prised he was asked to resign at the end of the season.

The Rebels have lost 12 con­sec­u­tive South­east­ern Con­fer­ence games, includ­ing Saturday’s 30–13 loss to Ken­tucky. Mis­sis­sippi is 2–7 this year, 0–6 in the SEC. Nutt is 24–23 in his four years in Oxford.

He’ll stay to lead the Rebels for the season’s final three games, begin­ning with a home con­test against Louisiana Tech on Saturday.

Mis­sis­sippi ath­letic direc­tor Pete Boone announced the move dur­ing a press con­fer­ence with mem­bers of a somber coach­ing staff fill­ing the back of the room.

Boone also said he will step down as AD by the end of 2012.

“I wanted to be the first coach to take them to Atlanta. One of the best venues out there,” Nutt said. “We fell short of that goal. But I think we’ve made sig­nif­i­cant progress.

“I believe our pro­gram is in bet­ter shape than it was when I arrived.”

Nutt is mak­ing approx­i­mately $ 2.7 mil­lion this sea­son. Boone said the coach has a $ 6 mil­lion buy­out clause in his con­tract. How­ever, if no one on Nutt’s staff is retained by the next coach, the total buy­out will be about $ 8 million.

“I’m grate­ful to coach Nutt for his com­mit­ment to our uni­ver­sity and his com­mit­ment to our foot­ball pro­gram,” Ole Miss Chan­cel­lor Dr. Dan Jones said. “I know we’re all dis­ap­pointed in the lack of suc­cess over the last two years.”

Boone said he didn’t make an emo­tional deci­sion about Nutt’s future, but instead weighed the total decline of the pro­gram dur­ing the past two sea­sons, which have pro­duced a com­bined 6–15 record.

“Our goal is to com­pete for cham­pi­onships,” Boone said. “And we are not mak­ing progress in that regard.”

Ole Miss hosts Louisiana Tech on Sat­ur­day at Vaught-Hemingway Sta­dium before end­ing the sea­son with two con­fer­ence games against LSU and Mis­sis­sippi State

Nutt’s stun­ning fall was hard to fathom just two years ago. The 54-year-old coach came to Oxford after a 10-year tenure at Arkansas and imme­di­ately led Ole Miss to an 18–8 record over his first two sea­sons, includ­ing back-to-back Cot­ton Bowl vic­to­ries over Texas Tech and Okla­homa State.

It was the Rebels’ best back-to-back sea­sons in nearly 40 years.

But those vic­to­ries came with recruits brought to Ole Miss by for­mer coach Ed Org­eron, who was widely seen as a ter­rific recruiter but ter­ri­ble game-day coach. Once the ros­ter started fill­ing with Nutt’s recruits, the tal­ent level dropped noticeably.

The down­fall began in the 2010 sea­son opener, when Ole Miss was stunned by lowly Jack­sonville State 49–48 in dou­ble over­time. It was the first time in pro­gram his­tory that Ole Miss has lost to a team from the Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship Sub­di­vi­sion level.

Things never improved from that point. The Rebels fin­ished with a 4–8 record last sea­son and have been even worse this year. Though Ole Miss has a core of encour­ag­ing fresh­men, includ­ing receivers Nick­o­las Bras­sell and Donte Mon­crief, it wasn’t enough to win an SEC game or per­suade the Ole Miss admin­is­tra­tion that Nutt was the right per­son for the job going forward.

“This is the tough­est con­fer­ence in Amer­ica,” Nutt said.

Ole Miss has been a largely mediocre pro­gram for decades, but the Rebels’ recent trou­bles were par­tic­u­larly embar­rass­ing. The 12 straight SEC losses are the most in pro­gram his­tory and Nutt has lost two straight to rival Mis­sis­sippi State. A fan-based group called For­ward Rebels bought sev­eral full-page adver­tise­ments in area news­pa­pers, crit­i­ciz­ing the admin­is­tra­tion and call­ing for new leadership.

The next coach will be the Rebels’ fifth since 1998 and third since 2007.

Boone has been the Ole Miss ath­letic direc­tor for 14 years over two sep­a­rate tenures. His last two foot­ball hires– Ed Org­eron and Nutt– have not turned out well.

Jones said that for­mer Ole Miss quar­ter­back Archie Man­ning and FedEx exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Mike Glenn will lead the search for both a new foot­ball coach and an ath­letic direc­tor. Jones will have the final deci­sion on both hires.

Jones said hir­ing a coach before an ath­letic direc­tor would not be an ideal sit­u­a­tion, but was con­fi­dent the uni­ver­sity would make good deci­sions. He said he hadn’t put together a list of qual­i­fi­ca­tions for a new coach or ath­letic director.

“I’m anx­ious to sit down with the com­mit­tee and see what they have to say,” Jones said.

Ole Miss assis­tant coaches and play­ers streamed through the foot­ball facil­i­ties on Mon­day after­noon, but most didn’t know until just before the announce­ment. Nutt said he would address the team later Mon­day afternoon.

Nutt said his imme­di­ate focus would be on beat­ing Louisiana Tech, but after the sea­son he wanted to con­tinue his coach­ing career.

“I’ll try to sit down with (my wife) and drink some iced tea,” Nutt said. “And then we’ll see what happens.”

Fol­low David Brandt on Twit­ter: http://www.twitter.com/davidbrandt

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more col­lege foot­ball news see: Ole Miss’ Nutt to resign after sea­son .

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