HOOVER, Alabama — Houston Nutt, absent from Southeastern Conference Media Days since 2011, made the biggest splash at the event so far this year, and he didn’t even have to ride the escalator at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham to do it.
The former Ole Miss coach filed a federal civil lawsuit against his former employer Wednesday, alleging Hugh Freeze, Ross Bjork and others conspired to push a false public narrative that would pin the program’s NCAA woes on Nutt.
Those actions, Nutt alleges in the suit, violated the school’s 2011 several agreement, one that was forged at the end of the Rebels’ disastrous ’11 season, the fourth for Nutt in Oxford, via defamation of character.
Coincidentally (or not, and I’m betting on not), Freeze is due to arrive in Hoover Thursday morning to speak at SEC Media Days. Freeze’s appearance was already going to include a lot of discussion about the ongoing NCAA investigation into the Ole Miss football program. Now there’s another off-the-field topic for the media to explore.
Nutt led Ole Miss to back-to-back Cotton Bowls in 2008 and 2009 before winning just six games in 2010 and 2011 combined. His final Ole Miss team was an abomination, losing in blowout fashion at Vanderbilt in Week 3 and then falling apart in the middle of the season (sans a moral victory of sorts against Arkansas that October) before the school announced he wouldn’t return for the 2012 season two days after an early-November loss at Kentucky.
Nutt, now a CBS television analyst, has not returned to coaching since finishing out the 2011 season with losses to LSU, Louisiana Tech and Mississippi State. Nutt is suing the school for punitive damages.
Nutt was incensed in January 2016 when local and national reports said the majority of the allegations in the school’s first notice of allegations occurred during Nutt’s tenure. Of the 13 football violations alleged by the NCAA, nine occurred under Freeze’s watch.
“Coach Freeze had knowingly lied to the journalists and recruiting prospects by saying that the NCAA’s investigation had little, if anything, to do with him or his coaching staff and was instead focused on alleged rules violations by Coach Nutt’s staff,” the complaint states. “Coach Freeze falsely stated that most, if not all, of the NCAA’s allegations involved ‘Houston Nutt’ and his staff. At the time Coach Freeze made these statements, he was fully aware that they were patently false, yet he continued to make such statements, severely damaging Coach Nutt’s reputation. …The protection of Coach Freeze became the University’s Number One priority in dealing with the NCAA investigation.”
“We have not yet been served with the lawsuit, but we are aware it has been filed. We were provided a copy a short time ago. We will carefully review Coach Nutt’s claims and respond in due course,” Ole Miss general counsel Lee Tyner said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.
Nutt issued a brief statement through his Arkansas-based attorney, Thomas Mars, telling Yahoo Sports: “The lawsuit filed today speaks for itself. I’m going to let the federal court in Mississippi take it from here. I won’t be making any comments about the lawsuit. Please direct any questions you have to my lawyers.”
Reached by Yahoo Sports Wednesday, SEC spokesman Herb Vincent declined comment on the suit.
Make no mistake, while I have no doubt Nutt would love a payday, this suit was personal. In my opinion, Nutt’s target isn’t Ross Bjork or Kyle Campbell. Instead, Nutt wants Freeze. I’m not alone in this opinion.
Freeze will be asked about his relationship with Nutt on Thursday. I suspect he’ll say nice things. No one will buy it. No one. Freeze took over in December 2011 and quickly rebuilt the Ole Miss program, going to four straight bowl games before finishing 5-7 last fall. Nutt tried from the outside to take credit for some of the Rebels’ early success, but no one in Oxford played along.
In fairness to Freeze, no one should have. Nutt left the Ole Miss program in shambles. Academics were horrid, the atmosphere inside the program was beyond caustic and the overall talent level was mid-level Sun Belt.
Still, and I’m going to tread lightly here as I’m Journalist No. 3 in Nutt’s suit, Nutt makes some valid points in his filing.
Are the points valid enough to win a judgement against Ole Miss? I have no idea.
However, the timing of Wednesday’s filing leads me to believe a courtroom victory would just be the cherry on the icing on the cupcake. The goal Wednesday was to land a devastating blow against Freeze.
And for a coach who spent his final season receiving mercy from his peers on the field, Nutt had no mercy for Freeze on Wednesday. The lawsuit was a brutal assault on Freeze’s character. Freeze will walk to a podium on Thursday, all eyes and ears trained to him.
Here’s the good news for Freeze, if there is any: Thursday is a trial run of sorts, for if he makes it that far, Freeze will have his day in front of the NCAA Committee on Infractions. Can he convince those members he is who he says he is? Or will they believe a version of Nutt’s lawsuit? In other words, will the COI believe Freeze is a guy who will say and do anything to protect his image and his job, even bend or twist the truth?
Ultimately, at least in my opinion, this investigation has always been about Freeze. Nutt’s lawsuit appears to be as well.
