Coaching Changes

The Rebels have a new coach in Houston Nutt whose a prove winner in the SEC. Nutt has his flaws. A little texting scandal involving an unattractive news reporter and difficulty developing a passing game. But he's a coach that's won in the SEC, more importantly the SEC west getting to Atlanta a few times. And while Arkansas has more money thanks to some high profile boosters the state of Arkansas doesn't produce the talent that Mississippi does. So its a pretty even situation. He's also always had dominate running games. The Reverend Nutt's a solid recruiter but not spectacular. He does a great job of developing the talent he brings in. And his players loved to play for him. Which wasn't the case for his predecessor in Oxford. But then if I wrote everything he was better at then Eddie I'd run out of room on the blog.

He's also a little crazy. But CRAZY LIKE A FOX! Which is fun. And the Red Fox is the state mammal of Mississippi so that has to be a good sign.

The true test is how does he compare with the rest of the SEC. Because beating the pants off of Eddie doesn't mean anything. High school coaches, err church league coaches could do that. I hate to do a 1-12 ranking of the coaches because its really more of a tiered approach. If you have a flaw your relatively equal to another with just one different but single flaw. The only easy thing is that Fat Phil Fulmer is 12th. No one in the country gets less out of more than Fulmer. He's the anti-Jim Grobe. He can recruit and Cut calls a solid game offensively. But this is what makes the SEC so tough because the leagues worst coach has won a title.

I made this graph to illustrate the coaches respective rankings.(click to enlarge)

In the same spirit I researched into the respective wives of the SEC coaches and created the SEC Coaches Wives Index seen below. The idea spawned from Deep South Sport's rankings of the top five wives a few years ago. I couldn't find a picture or even evidence that Jeri Croom actually exists. So I'm operating under a theory that she really is Jeri Ryan and is never around during football season because she's in Hollywood filming Shark with James Woods. Have to say some of the coaches, ahem Saban, that came in low on the index really surprised me. Especially ones that are know as great recruiters, ahem Saban. The Coaching changes in the last couple of years also really hurt the index because Mike Shula's wife would have easily come in second behind Jeri Croom-Ryan. Vicky Fulmer gets a little bump for having an attractive daughter and older pictures. They last few years have been rough in Vol nation.

(click to enlarge)