Houston Nutt has a button he can press on the podium in the Ole Miss conference room. When he pushes this button, stained glass windows appear from portals in the side, a church organ emerges from a riser in the back of the room, and the piped-in sound of a humming choir emanates from speakers underneath each chair. Nutt hit the button and hit it hard in his press conference yesterday, where Nutt not only made all of the faces you see here, but also said all the words we're about to make fun of in rapid fashion. (Transcript via Veazey.)
"Guys, I just want to hit briefly, let’s just go back to the start of the year. You know, this season has not gone the way we planned.
LIES. The plan was and has always been the same: lose ridiculous game, win ridiculous game. You see LSU fans? You see their blind terror at facing you, knowing the Houston Nutt game is just sitting there in the barrel with their name on it?
Houston Nutt runs his entire program a step ahead of every other coach because most coaches just wait for someone else to threaten their job. Houston Nutt does it himself, and then saves himself, and thus creates his own microclimate of expectations and goal-fulfillment. It's an astonishing balancing act requiring a gymnast's balance and a carnie barker's sales skills, but it's entry-level bidness with Nutt.
But I just want to remind our fans of this, number one, it was just 50 years, its been 50 years since you won back to back January 1 games. Fifty! Fifty! And so my point is, I’m excited about — not with wins and losses, but I’m excited that there’s 12 freshmen that are playing. Twelve! I’m excited about the future.
FIFTY.
This is Houston Nutt reminding you gently that before he got there Ole Miss hadn't had two solid shits in a row for the span of half a century, and that he's the magical fiber supplement that makes this all happen, a kind of charismatic evangelical Weetabix for the football colon. As ballsy as it is to do this in a year when you lost to Jacksonville State, got blown out by Tennessee, and lost to Vanderbilt, it's...it's true. It's totally and completely true. Free pass given here, Reverend. Proceed.
I know now, more in my heart than ever, I know we can get to Atlanta. I know we can. Because I know we can recruit here. We’ve proven that the last two seasons.
Also true, since Houston Nutt has offered 839 scholarships to 103 scholarships in the past two years. You say, "Hey, that's way more than one scholarship per recruit!" Yes it is, but when you really want a recruit as a coach, you'll embrace the future, and that future is proving your love by offering at least three scholarships each to players on your recruiting board.
I don’t want to lose focus on this — I remember the day we got here. I remember the day we got here, guys. I didn’t see any life. I didn’t see any. I saw a lot of no-hope.
No-hope. Now you're just making up hobbit words, Houston.
And it’s easy to dwell on the negative. It’s easy to sit up on the 50-yard line, it’s easy to sit there and say ‘Bad, bad, bad, bad, embarrassing.’
More so with some teams than others, brah. WE KNOW BECAUSE WE'RE FLORIDA FANS AND OH GOD THE BLOOD THERE'S SO MUCH OF IT---
If you think you’re hurting, you oughta just look at the tip of my itsy-bitsy little finger and then go all the way up through my body.
Houston Nutt has just invited us to tour his body. We enter through a tiny, retro-moderne shuttle wearing white bodysuits, go-go boots, and stylish watches we will leave behind in Houston's blood vessels as trinkets. We see the wonders of the human body from the inside: the pulsing of blood vessels, the gelatinous forms of white blood cells hunting buggy prey in the corridors of the circulatory system, the very pulsing of the master cylinder itself, Houston Nutt's passion-producing heart. It is beautiful, but we see no signs of medical distress: no bleeding, no tumors, no malignancies or sprung leaks telling us anything is outwardly wrong.
Now, we did see Jevan Snead eating a sandwich and looking forlorn in the lower reaches of Nutt's pancreas, but really you knew he was there all along, right?
But look at this, though, if you think Florida’s happy?
YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH.
GIGGITY.
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