LIKE IT IS : Nutt vs. Tuberville becomes decade-old rivalry
Posted on Wednesday, October 10, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/203960/
Although it has been written before, with the 10-year anniversary coming up and more important, the Auburn-Arkansas game, here it is one more time, but with perhaps some new insight.
Danny Ford had been fired, and Frank Broyles was being turned down for interviews by coaches at Louisiana Tech, Tulane and assorted other places.
The name Tommy Tuberville kept coming up, but it was in his contract at Ole Miss that he could not interview with another school.
If a school wanted him, it had to offer without a face-to-face meeting.
The name Houston Nutt came up, and soon he was winging his way from Boise, Idaho, to Fayetteville for an interview.
Don’t know how Nutt did in the interview, but the Little Rock native wowed the media and any fans in the area.
He was energetic, enthusiastic and said he’d take the job for what he was making at Boise State ($ 175, 000 per year ).
At the College Football Hall of Fame inductions in New York, some members of the UA search committee “ran into” Tuberville and “exchanged” pleasantries.
They came away impressed.
It was a two-horse race, and Tuberville, who is from Camden, appeared to be clearly in the lead the night the search committee met.
John White made one demand, that the vote be unanimous.
If memory serves, there were eight guys on the selection committee, and the first vote was 7-1 Tuberville.
The lone holdout would not be swayed, and the second vote was 6-2.
Over the course of the night, there would be cursing, crying and a number of votes taken.
Out in Boise, Nutt was getting anxious.
He told yours truly — who was attending the Kenyana Tolbert fundraising auction — he was thinking about pulling his name out of it, that Boise State officials were not happy with him thinking about leaving after only one year.
Nutt was told to expect a call from a guy named Ted Harrod.
Harrod was Broyles’ best friend and closest confidant. They traveled all over the world with their wives.
Just a little more than two years later, Harrod became a household name in Hogs land.
He was accused of paying student-athletes for summer work that they didn’t do.
His soon-to-be-former daughter-in-law made the claims on a Dallas television station when the Hogs were preparing for Texas and the Cotton Bowl.
She later recanted her story, but Harrod was banned from the program for five years. Those five years have since passed, but Harrod has not returned to supporting the Razorbacks.
Anyway, someone on the search committee was keeping Tuberville abreast of what was happening.
After much arguing and bickering, the vote began to favor Nutt, until finally it was 7-1 in his favor.
Finally, after long hours, the lone Tuberville vote snapped a pencil in half and barked to tell White the vote was unanimous.
Most of the search committee was made up of former quarterbacks, guys who won a lot of games for the Razorbacks partly because of their competitive nature.
That’s a little ironic since the most often-heard complaint about Nutt has been his inability to develop, or perhaps keep, a top-level quarterback.
Nutt, who more than tripled his salary by accepting the Arkansas job, became an instant hero his first season, leading the Razorbacks to eight consecutive victories before closing the season losing three of four.
The Hogs have been to two SEC championship games under Nutt. They have twice been SECWest co-champions and won the West outright last season.
In the past couple of years, Nutt has become the most polarizing figure in Razorbacks history.
Less than a year after that vote, Tuberville accepted the job at Auburn. He has a 44-20 record in SEC play and has won two SEC-West titles, shared three and won the SEC outright when he had a 13-0 season.
So Saturday, two native Arkansans will tee it up again in a rivalry that started almost 10 years ago in a private meeting room.