Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

10/19/2011 at 1:00pm

Image by Ole Miss Sports Information

Houston Nutt hasn't won an SEC game since this graphic was compiled from a November 2010 press conference.

While the trajectories of Bobby Petrino's career at No. 9 Arkansas and Houston Nutt's at Ole Miss have been noted leading into Saturday's 11:21 a.m. kickoff, the main focus of the media this week has been "Can Houston Nutt win another game in the SEC?"

• Nutt has lost his last nine conference games (and then some), a record at Ole Miss. Even he acknowledges that he's on the proverbial "hot seat".

• Last weekend proved that the low points can always get lower. No. 2 Alabama made easy work of the Ole Miss, granting the Rebels the first touchdown before scoring 52 unanswered points throughout the rest of the four quarters.

• Two Ole Miss defenders were injured in that game and are now out for the season, giving the Rebels another couple of holes on an already shallow roster. Nutt has been trying to fill positions left open by injured running backs and suspended players (he threw wide receiver Melvin Harris off the team on Monday.)

• Nearly every online story this week about Ole Miss – including those published by Jackson's Clarion Ledger, Memphis' Commercial-Appeal and Fort Smith's Times Record – has used the same Associated Press image of Nutt looking wistfully toward the scoreboard. That photograph pretty much sums up what happened on Saturday better than any box score can.

• It would do wonders for the confidence of Nutt and his fanbase if Ole Miss pulled an upset on its home turf, beating the team Nutt led for nearly a decade. A win would extend Nutt's record against Petrino to 3-1 and would give Ole Miss its first SEC victory in over a year, since beating Kentucky 42-35 on Oct. 2, 2010.

• The expression on Nutt's face when the Democrat-Gazette's Bob Holt asks him about that streak around the 9:25 mark of this video from this week's press conference again proves that sometimes Nutt is more capable of answering a question without saying a word.

• Nutt also said at that press conference that he sees "a bright light at the end of the tunnel... and it's not a train." We once had a relative who also saw a light at the end of a tunnel that wasn't a train, but in that case, the light was Jesus and our relative died.

• Whether or not Nutt's coaching career at Ole Miss (and likely the SEC) dies is still up in the air. As many point out, Nutt has a "bag of tricks" from which he's made a habit of pulling out impossible upsets over No. 1 teams or winning the longest overtime games in college football.

Whether there's still any magic left in that bag could be revealed on Saturday.

Tagged: Bobby Petrino, Ole Miss Rebels, Arkansas Razorbacks, Houston Nutt