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By Jay Coulter
jccoulter@gmail.com
And you thought you had a bad Monday. They were dropping like flies across the college football world yesterday. Georgia Tech head coach Chan Gailey kicked things off yesterday morning, claiming the first pink slip of the day.
A few hours later Arkansas head coach Houston Nutt joined the list. The Nutt firing is a shocker in some ways. Since when did knocking off the top team in the country and finishing 8-4 get you fired in Fayetteville? Somebody has set the bar a little too high in Northwest Arkansas.
Nutt is a strange guy – there’s no question about it. But the man is a pretty decent football coach and recruiter. I know Tommy Tuberville has a lot of respect for him. Something tells me he may end up at Ole Miss. The Rebels would love to have some consistent eight win seasons.
Another casualty on Monday was Southern Miss coach Jeff Bower. That looks like a good fit for Will Muschamp. It’s a program where you can have modest success and build your resume.
Muschamp was mentioned Monday by the Atlanta Constitution as a candidate for the Georgia Tech job. He’s also thought to be a candidate at Ole Miss.
We may want to go ahead and prepare ourselves for life after Muschamp. My guess is he’s going to get a shot this year. His coaching credentials are some of the best around. You can bet there are people making calls today on his behalf.
As expected, there’s not much to report on the Tommy Tuberville front. He did meet with school president Jay Gogue and athletic director Jay Jacobs on Monday morning. No details of the meeting have leaked out. Jacobs did release this statement:
"President Gogue, Tommy, and I visited today and had a great meeting. As I’ve previously stated, Tommy’s our coach and we’re proud of his accomplishments. Tommy and I will sit down and meet in the near future as we do at the end of every season. We’ll discuss what we can do to make the program better and build upon the success that we’ve sustained. Once we’ve met, I will make a recommendation to President Gogue."
As we talked yesterday, Arkansas doesn’t appear to be a real threat for Tuberville’s services. It’s hard to imagine a school like that coming up with $6 million to buyout Tuberville’s contract and then pay him in the neighborhood of $3 million a year. You have to believe that his new contract at Auburn will be in that range.
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There’s been a lot of talk about the fire at Toomer’s Corner. Luckily, there wasn’t much to it. A couple of pictures that are making their way around the internet make things look worse than they really are.
Fortunately, it was mostly toilet paper that caught fire. There was very minimal damage to the trees. There are conflicting reports as to the cause of the fire. The most popular rumor is that Alabama fans started it. That works for me.