Three days after Ole Miss canned head football coach Ed Orgeron, the school has hired former University of Arkansas coach Houston Nutt this week, University of Mississipi officials confirmed Tuesday. Nutt, who was hired after resigning from Arkansas, signed a four-year, $7.4 million contract with the university, which has gone through three head football coaches in the last 15 years.
Chancellor Robert Khayat and UM athletic director Pete Boone made the decision to fire Orgeron immediately after the Rebels lost to Mississippi State in this year’s Egg Bowl. That crucial loss ended the Rebels’ Southeastern Conference season at 0-8, winless for the first time in 25 years.
“My goal since coming here has been to make Ole Miss be better in all phases of athletics,” Boone said Wednesday in a Clarion-Ledger article. “The only piece of that puzzle left is football.”
With a 75-48 record in 10 seasons at Arkansas and two SEC Western Division titles under his belt, Nutt told Ole Miss fans Wednesday he has everything he needs to mold a winning team.
“It gives me chills when I walk in this room and I hear you clap and applaud,” Nutt said in a Clarion-Ledger article. “It means you’re hungry, and you’re hungry for success.”
Initial response from the Ole Miss fan base has been overwhelming.
“At the [Tuesday night] basketball game, [the headline] ‘Houston Nutt hired’ was put on the jumbotron and the entire crowd erupted in applause,” UM junior finance major Christian Malley said. “I haven’t found one person who’s disagreed with it.”
Trey DuBard, a junior political science major at Ole Miss, said Nutt’s experience as a former quarterback and excellence as a quarterback coach should benefit the Rebels next year.
“The first year, he should win. Ole Miss fans and students expect to win,” DuBard said. “We expect bowl bids and we expect SEC championships.”
Neither Rebel fans nor Orgeron expected the Bulldogs’ fourth-quarter rally and Egg Bowl victory that followed.
“I think we’ve hit rock-bottom, and there’s nowhere to go from here but up,” UM senior broadcast journalism major Claire Campassi said. “Hopefully Coach Nutt will take this football team in a new direction.”
Though many of the Rebel faithful support Nutt’s introduction as head coach, others say they don’t agree with the politics involved in Orgeron’s dismissal.
“When I [visited the] ESPN [Web site], their title of the article said that Ole Miss was behind the coach, then fired him,” Malley said. “[Khayat and Boone] were saying they were behind the coach and I think the only reason they said that was to keep any recruits coming in – to not alarm them.”
Campassi said she thought Boone’s motive was more personal.
“I think Pete Boone was kind of saving his own butt, [a] move to save himself,” she said.
Orgeron had been the lowest-paid coach in the SEC, at $900,000 a year. He leaves behind a 10-25 record (3-21 SEC) after three years in Oxford.
“I just think [Boone and Khayat] didn’t give [Coach] O enough time, especially since Cutcliffe was a poor recruiter,” DuBard said. “He was hired to get Eli [Manning] to come here, and that was it. We got Eli, got our ten-win season, and he was fired the next year.”
Campassi said she believes the volatile head football coaching atmosphere at Ole Miss won’t scare Nutt in his first year.
“I think [Nutt] is a lot more experienced and knows what he’s doing,” she said. “He shouldn’t worry about losing his job constantly.”
DuBard said the critics can tear Orgeron up, but he definitely supplied them with quality recruits.
“He can spot talent a mile away; you gotta give the guy that,” he said. “Recruiting talent doesn’t exactly translate into wins, though. And a 10-25 record is not acceptable.