This past weekend my wife and I rendezvoused w/ my parents at the farm and headed to Oxford, Mississippi bright and early Saturday morning to see the Razorbacks do battle w/ the Ole Miss Rebels. Needless to say we went thinking that we were going to quickly do work on the Rebels. That simply wasn’t the case. Yes, we did get a win, but it was a hard fought win that I wasn’t for sure was going to happen until the very last few seconds clicked off the clock. The Razorbacks played terrible, but that’s another story…
The biggest story from the game, in my opinion, happened after the game when Coach Houston Nutt went after Neal McCready, a sports writer, because he had predicted the Rebels to lose 49-10. Here’s exactly what he said:
“I don’t read your stuff, they tell me what you say,” said Nutt, looking at McCready. “One of my freshmen told me that Neal McCready wrote that we’d get beat 49-10. Wasn’t no 49-10.”
Should there have been a parade following the game because the score wasn’t near as bad as they had thought it would be? Should everyone just overlook the fact that Ole Miss just broke an SEC record by losing 10 consecutive conference games in a row? There have been a ton of stories about this since it happened: Commercial Appeal (Memphis), and Clarion Ledger (Jackson). I really enjoyed Neal’s follow-up post after the press conference. Watching all of this transpire on the way home from the ballgame on my iPhone I realized that this is so reminiscent of the time Houston called into debate sports writers Wally Hall on The Show w/ No Name one afternoon. The guy has so much trouble taking blame for his shortcomings and lack of ability that it’s sickening. Rather than accept one bit of responsibility for blowing a play call or poor clock management, he quickly turns his attention to the media and whoever else is handy. His ego was what ultimately turned the vast majority of the Razorback nation against him and it doesn’t appear that he can do anything about changing that.
I’m pretty sure that he’ll be leaving Oxford at the end of this year, never to return to the big leagues of the SEC again. At the end of the day, it’s probably our fault for ever elevating him to this level to start with. I just feel bad for the guy because he is obviously out of his league, and is getting ready to burn some more bridges. Good thing he has Jimmy Sexton looking out for him.
Someone sent me this and I thought it was highly appropriate…
Seeing Houston go off in the direction he did at the press conference really brought back some memories. If Oxford needs to know where to get airplanes or banners, they just need to let us know here at Arkansas. FYI, if you want to watch the full press conference, here’s a link…
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