Week 9 Review: RIP Houston Nutt

Auburn 41 Ole Miss 24 (should have been 17).  I want to change the review up a little this week as I have a number of different takes all over the map and want to avoid a long diatribe like last week...

• Rest in peace Houston Nutt as an SEC coach come December... I guess Dan Mullen will hammer the final nail into the coffin but Auburn got to hammer in the second to last one. It has been a long time coming. We have been going up against Houston Nutt for THIRTEEN YEARS (!!!). I believe that it is finally over and I have a special memorial to Nutt at the end of this post.

• Boo to bloggers who write confusing long posts like my last one. Good gosh it was horrible. I apologize to the three other people who read this blog (-: I will try to keep it tighter from now on. I will also try to keep my reviews on the present and save my opinions on the future for an after season post. Mixing them together makes for a long winded confusing post that is hard to follow.

• What I liked from Saturday... I liked that we stopped swapping in Frazier so much. I liked that Mike Dyer had a great day. I liked that Emory Blake was back. I liked watching Phillip Lutzenkirchen. I liked the way our defense played in the second half. Caveat to all this... Ole Miss is a truly bad team.

• What I did not like Saturday... I did not like the way our defense got pushed all over the field in the first half giving up almost 150 yards rushing by half time. I did not like (as I have said over and over and over) how we do not try to be more balanced. We threw the ball only 15 times just as I predicted.  We had another good opportunity to work on the passing game and did not do it.  Again we will not be able to beat Georgia or stay in the game long against Bama with these game plans.  Last year we used the lesser games to work on our passing game and it paid off big at the end of the season.  I do not understand why we do not do some of that this year. 

• I was sick of the Bama/LSU hype a month ago, now it is just nauseating.  I am going on a sports blackout this week to avoid as much of it as I can.  WE GET IT, IT IS A BIG GAME.  It is probably the biggest game of this year but get over yourself , it is not the biggest of all time or even close.  Good night Auburn and LSU met last year with almost the same undefeated records and in the top five.  Auburn then completely dominated basically the same LSU team that everyone is going on so much about this year, they do not have that many new players.  Auburn took LSU's manhood last year running up 450 yards rushing while Nick Fairley single-handedly dominated their offensive line.

Finally a memorial to Houston Nutt.  I do not think I have cussed any coach more.  This was because he was Tommy Tuberville's nemesis and simply because he has been around so long.  I remember rejoicing when Arkansas finally got rid of him only to see him rise from the dead at Ole Miss.  Luckily nobody can save the Confederates down in Oxford and he really did not hurt us and now we must say good bye...

• 1998 - Houston Nutt's best team.  Even in 1997 you could see they had a good team so Houston Nutt came and inherited all of Danny Ford's blood, sweat and tears.  With Clint Stoerner at quarterback and a lot of talent they were one horrible fumble away from possibly going undefeated through the regular season instead of Tennessee.  Unfortunately for Nutt, Stoerner did fumble in Knoxville and Arkansas, hung over from that loss, lost to a good but lesser Mississippi State the next week and did not even make it to the SEC Championship Game and lost their bowl game.  Arkansas and Nutt also beat Auburn and interim coach Bill Oliver in a close one, 24-21. It was the best effort by Auburn in that awful season. I was at that game.

• 1999 - Nutt got in the first of his 11:30 beatdowns of Auburn and Tuberville this season. Arkansas crushed Auburn 34-10 once again behind Clint Stoerner. Arkansas was not quite as good as 1998 but did upset Tennessee gaining a little revenge for "The Fumble" the year before. This knocked Tennessee out of the SEC Championship Game when they were the best team in the SEC, in my opinion, in 1999. Bama won the SEC title but Tennessee beat them handily in Tuscaloosa.

• 2000 - Auburn and Tuberville finally got on the board taking down Arkansas and Nutt at home behind Rudi Johnson in a close one 21-19.

• 2001 - In one of the most frustrating losses I have ever witnessed, Arkansas and Nutt behind a freshman quarterback named... Matt Jones blew out Auburn in the second half to win 42-17 (after you guessed it another 11:30 start time). At this point, nobody knew anything about Matt Jones, he looked like just some lanky dufus. As he shredded our defense again and again on the option I am screaming at the TV wondering how he was doing it. I remember going to my parents' garage at halftime and just screaming. You saw later that Matt Jones was actually fast but I have never seen a guy that runs fast look slower. Of course another reason I was cussing at halftime is that Auburn got the ball back with little time left and should have just took a knee. Instead, Tommy Tuberville decides this is the time to go for it and Dan Cobb throws a pick six to kill us.

• 2002 - In one of the most humiliating home defeats in Auburn history, Arkansas whipped Auburn (and first year defensive coordinator Gene Chizik) 38-17 rushing for over 400 yards (IN OUR HOUSE) including an 80 yard Matt Jones TD run at the end of the game (which by the way started at... 11:30). The wife and the kids had to leave the house for this one as I was losing my mind watching us get pushed around our own field that much. To make it worse, Arkansas was coming off the longest game in SEC history to that point, a six overtime marathon in Knoxville and Auburn was coming off a BYE WEEK. This was Nutt at his pinnacle against Auburn as he had destroyed us 3 out of 4 years and won 4 out of 5. Nutt and quarterback Matt Jones were truly Auburn's nemesis at this point.

• 2003 - Auburn and Tuberville in their best defensive game of this season went into Fayetteville and knocked off Nutt, Jones and the rest of the #7 ranked Arkansas Razorbacks 10-3. Arkansas tied the game late on a long Matt Jones touchdown run but it was called back due to a holding penalty. That the refs actually made the call was amazing to me. This was definitely one of the best highlights of this season.

• 2004 - Finally... in one of the more satisfying wins in Auburn history, one of the best teams in Auburn history finally laid a beatdown on Arkansas, Nutt and Jones 38-20. It could have been a lot worse as I believe we started the game 31-0 or close to it. The defense harassed and sacked Matt Jones all day. He never did anything. It was a fitting way to say goodbye to one of the biggest villains of Auburn football we have played against in the last 15 years.

• 2005 - The run continues... Auburn behind a Kenny Irons 200 yard rushing performance (with Marcus McNeil leading the charge blocking for him) crushes Arkansas and Nutt in Fayetteville 34-17. I will always remember this game as my youngest son had just been born a few days before and we were still in the hospital and listened to it there. I also remember Arkansas being like the rest of our SEC brethren and not helping us out and preventing us from showing the game on pay-per-view for no good reason. This put Auburn at 4-4 against Nutt and things appeared back to normal.

• 2006 - This is where Houston Nutt earned his nickname "The Cockroach" as in you just can't seem to get rid of him. Auburn came into this game undefeated and ranked second in the nation. Arkansas dominated the whole way behind a devastating rushing attack led by Darren McFadden and current Auburn OC Gus Malzahn. True freshman quarterback Mitch Mustain did not even have to attempt many passes for the Razorbacks. Nutt came in and beat a very good Auburn team at home with a true freshmen quarterback. You do not get to #2 in the nation too often so it was a bitter defeat. This loss also knocked us out of the SEC Championship Game. Arkansas ended up going to Atlanta and losing to eventual national champion Florida (whom Auburn beat). Want to guess what time the game started? (To be factual this game was actually a CBS 11:00am game instead of the regional 11:30 game that the other ones were).

• 2007 - In the last game between Auburn and Nutt while he was at Arkansas, Auburn prevailed against Arkansas in Fayetteville 9-7, again playing their best defensive game of the season shutting down both Darren McFadden and Felix Jones (and Peyton Hillis). This left Auburn 5-5 against Nutt but man those five losses were really bad...

• 2008 - Once again living up to his nickname "The Cockroach", Nutt immediately gets hired by Ole Miss to replace Ed Orgeron. Meanwhile Tommy Tuberville has scuttled the ship at Auburn by hiring OC Tony Franklin and Nutt gets to beat him one more time in his last year at Auburn 17-7. Interesting note, much maligned as a quarterback, Kodi Burns did throw for 300 yards in this game. This gave Nutt a winning record against Tuberville and cemented him as Tuberville's biggest nemesis while he was at Auburn.

Gene Chizik, other than the 2002 debacle as a defensive coordinator, has had no such problems with Houston Nutt. Auburn has beaten Ole Miss and Nutt handily his three years at Auburn and Nutt's teams at Ole Miss have gone from bad-to-worse as Ed Orgeron's talent has left and Nutt's oversigning stopped by the SEC. That leads us back to the present where Houston Nutt, after 14 seasons head coaching in the SEC, will finally be gone. Unfortunately, it seems like Bobby Petrino has taken up his mantle at Arkansas as Auburn's nemesis. Petrino is now 3-1 against Auburn only losing to Cam Newton and company last year but that is a discussion for another day. Back on point, farewell Houston Nutt, don't let the door knob hit you in the...