Bittersweet Emotion

If your last name is Nutt, you can’t really expect to have a normal life.  But honestly, isn’t that how it is when you mix celebrity and Arkansans?  Bill, Billy Bob, Nutt….if there is one thing Arkansans are its unique, and my how Houston Dale earns that adjective.

When his predecessor, Danny Ford, was fired after the 1997 season, Houston Nutt’s name was not at the top of the list of possible architects for a badly needed Razorback Resurrection.   Other names, names you’ve heard of, were tossed about.  Tommy Bowden, Dennis Franchione, Butch Davis.  But Tommy Tuberville, who had just finished his third year with Ole Miss, was in lead from the get go.

Enter Houston Dale.  While Tuberville was forced to meet with U of A officials secretly, Nutt, who was head coach at the pre-statue-of-liberty-to-beat-Oklahoma-in-a-BCS-bowl Boise State, was able to lobby for the job with skill of Washington’s finest.  Nutt was once a ball boy in War Memorial Stadium.  He was born and raised in Little Rock.  He was once a Razorback.  He had been training for this moment his entire life.  And from second he set foot back in his home state, he did what Houston Nutt does best.  He fired us up.  He oozed pure, unadulterated emotion.  And just like that, in the blink of an eye, he had pulled off his first upset before ever coaching a game in Arkansas.  He leap-frogged Tuberville, who called to accept the job only to find out he was a day late.

Nutt’s first season as head football coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks was truly a preview of what his 10-year reign would become.  He made a veteran-laden team believe in themselves, and in turn, he made a state believe in the impossible.  The ‘98 Hogs began with two victories over inferior opponents and no one thought much of it.  But then we beat Alabama, and eyebrows began to raise.  They made their way down I-40 for Nutt’s first trip back to War Memorial as a head coach with #22 next to their name.  One month later they were back on I-40, still undefeated, headed to Knoxville after thoroughly thumping Tuberville’s Rebels, and that #22 had risen to #9.  Electricity flowed through every corner of the Natural State.  In eight games Nutt had put the Hogs in a position no one could have ever dreamed they would be in, one game away from becoming a legitimate national championship contender.

What happened next, in front of 100,000 obnoxiously orange Tennessee fans, ever so aptly sums up the other half of Houston Nutt:  unthinkable, unimaginable, unbearable heartbreak.  Time stopped as our state watched in horror as that ball slipped from Clint Stoerner’s hand, and our dream of an undefeated season shattered.  If you cared even a little about Razorback football, you felt that pain.  To this day I can’t think about it without getting sick. To have our hopes so high, to go from the laughing stock of the league to a top ten team, to be minutes away from beating the number one team in the nation on national TV, only to have it all ripped away in an instant – that, as it turned out, was become classic Houston Nutt football.

To put it bluntly, throughout the 10 years of Houston Nutt, the peaks were higher than you would have ever dreamed, and the valleys were lower than you’d ever care to think of.  The more I think about it, though, it was the former that made the latter possible.  It was the fact the he could take us to unexpectedly wonderful heights that made the inevitable tragedies that would follow so unbearable.  The “Miracle on Markham” was pure bliss, and it was followed by an embarrassing loss to Georgia and another to Minnesota.  Beating Texas in Austin the next year was something to tell the grandkids about, and we soon managed to lose three straight games and fall from the top ten in the nation to the bottom of the SEC West.  And of course, most recently, we were a top five team, ESPN’s College Gameday was in Fayetteville, we had just routed the Tennessee, and we were an outside contender for the national championship game.  This, as we all remember but wish we didn’t, was followed by an LSU kick return for a touchdown, a Reggie Fish muffed punt, a miserable offensive performance against Wisconsin in the Capital One bowl, and, alas, a three game losing streak to end the season.  Excuse me while I take another swig of Pepto.

This was the yang that always came with his yen, the storm that inevitably followed his calm.  But honestly, he was just living up to his duty as an Arkansan.  Isn’t this about how it goes with most of our native heroes?  Bill Clinton, Billy Bob Thornton, John Daly.  They’re all exceptional, emotional, and, at times, downright embarrassing.  This, my friends, is Arkansas.

Houston Nutt has since packed up and ventured about 400 miles eastward on I 40.  But this Saturday, he will make his first encore appearance in Reynolds Razorback Stadium, this time on a different side of the field.  When I see him over there, preaching the gospel to his eager young Rebels, I’ll be confused at best.  He’s like that friend you have that annoys the hell out of you, but can also make you laugh harder than you ever thought you could.  You want to punch him in the face as you give him a bear hug.

In the end, however, there is one undeniable fact about Houston Dale Nutt that a large part of our state will likely ignore:  he’s family.  Love him or hate him, he’s Arkansas through and through.  And just like your crazy Uncle Larry who drinks too much at Christmas and forgot it was your birthday, again, he still deserves your respect because damned if he hasn’t made you smile from ear to ear a time or two.  We have all now moved on and our future is in the hands of Bobby P, so its probably about time to leave the past where it belongs, and start acting with dignity again.  Overall, he might have done us well, and he might of done us harm, depending on who you ask at the game this Saturday night.  But by asking you would miss the point altogether.