It Figures

In the wake of his hit piece on Houston Nutt, it seems Stewart Mandel got a lot of emails.

Your Houston Nutt article is an outrage! Who are you, Mr. Stewart Mandel, to call a fine coach trying to help someone dirty or question his integrity? You should be fired!! I think you, sir, are a big A$$!!
-- Steve, North Mississippi

After reading your latest article on Houston Nutt, I only have one thing to say: Thank you so much for publishing that article. I honestly can't thank you enough for exposing this man for who he truly is.
-- James, Little Rock, Ark.

I knew the Nutt column would elicit some strong reactions, but I had no idea they would split so diametrically between the states of Mississippi and Arkansas.

There is no chance that he "had no idea" the pro- and anti-Nutt emails would split that way.

I literally received hundreds of e-mails just like these two. It's no surprise Ole Miss fans so vociferously defended their coach (though I have no doubt the same exact people would have crucified Dan Mullen if by chance Mississippi State had taking Masoli instead),

So the national media and Rebel fans were united in spittle-flecked rage at Mullen when he suspended Anthony Dixon for a whopping one game (a meaningless scrimmage against Jackson State) last year in the wake of a DUI arrest? No? Drat.

but apparently Nutt is about as popular in Arkansas as Kiffin is in Tennessee.

Funny Mandel should mention Kiffin; though it was tough on Kiffin, Mandels' 1100-word piece on Kiffin's stiffing of Tennessee never once used the word "dirty." In fact, though it was admirably snarky about Kiffin's thin resume, the piece was devoid of any of the personal invective Mandel has hurled at Nutt this week. 

But the point of the column was not to rile up those two fan bases. Let me address a less partisan e-mail.

Stewart, your writing is usually spot-on in regards to the ever-wavering ethics of college football, but your criticism of Houston Nutt's acceptance of Masoli is uncharacteristically harsh to the point of seeming almost personal. I'm not saying that you're wrong about Nutt, just that you seem to have lost your perspective as a journalist on this one. What gives?
-- James, Edmond, Okla.

Note: Mandel undoubtedly got reasonable emails from Mississippi, too.  But publishing them would undermine the larger goal of smearing us.  So, the one reasonably tempered note he publishes comes from Oklahoma.

I don't dispute that the column was harsh, but it wasn't without reason.

My hope with the Nutt-Masoli piece was that readers might take a moment to rethink what truly constitutes "dirty" in this day and age.

Wow, this is slimy.  Let's try this: my hope with the "Stewart Mandel is a part-time transvestite whore" piece was not to smear Mandel or rile his fans, but just to get people thinking about the plight of part-time transvestite whores in today's society.  What's that you say?  It's unfair and cowardly to throw ugly invective at a particular person and then hide behind a trumped-up claim that you're engaging in high-minded, big-picture social commentary?  Damn. 

It's been an eventful off-season for scandal-related headlines, and as I wrote in the lead, I've noticed fans throwing around the d-word with reckless abandon, demonizing coaches and programs based mostly on blanket assumptions and innuendo. Listening to some of the revisionist history out there about Pete Carroll's USC tenure, you'd think he was handing Reggie Bush money out of his own wallet, which couldn't be further from the truth. If you're going to accuse someone of being "dirty," it really ought to be for something of his own doing.

Now this is rich.  Pete Carroll had rulebreakers and scumbags crawling all over his program.  If he didn't know it, it's only because he took great pains not to know it.  (Don't take my word for it; this is what the NCAA means when it invokes the dread phrase "lack of institutional control".)  But it's veritably unconscionable to call Carroll dirty!  Now, on the other hand...

Admittedly, Nutt has broken no rules, and if that's your sole criteria for judging a coach's ethics, then you're obviously going to disagree with the column.

That is to say: by any objective standards, Mandel is totally wrong.  But if we apply the special secret everything-Ole-Miss-does-is-way-worse-because-it's-them-doing-it standard beloved of sportswriters, then, hey, screw it.

But as I wrote, Nutt has demonstrated a repeated pattern over the past several years of shameless win-at-any-cost tactics.

Well, he wrote that.  But he didn't exactly prove it.

Taking on Masoli just happens to be his most brazenly transparent. No one's buying the cover that this has anything to do with "helping" a wayward kid.

So if you assume in advance that all Nutt's motivations are slimy, you come to the conclusion that Nutt is slimy.  Gotcha. 

As Nutt himself told the Memphis Commercial Appeal: "I could have not gone after him, gone 6-6 this season and got ready to reload [for 2011]. But when you think about your team, you have an obligation to them to do everything you can to put them in the best situation to win."

But of course the Nutt quote doesn't support Mandel's interpretation at all.  To be the confessed villain Mandel wants, Nutt would need to say "I could have not gone after him, gone 6-6 this season and been on thin ice for 2011.  But when you think about your career, you have an obligation to yourself to do everything you can to stay on top and make more money." 

Sadly, this has become the standard operating mentality for a lot of coaches, and I happen to find it more troublesome than many of the things others might consider "dirty," but unfortunately, a lot of fans now tacitly accept it.

Again, Mandel finds it more troublesome because it happened at Ole Miss.  It's no more or less complicated than that. The misdeeds of Lane Kiffin, Pete Carroll, Brian Kelly, et al?  Less troublesome.  Because they're not in Mississippi.

I am an Ole Miss fan, and if taking Masoli helps us win more games, so be it. This is what college football has become. Get over it.
-- David Davis, Taylorsville, Miss.

Case in point.

Here's one more email to prove that all Rebels are amoral scumbags! 

Hey, what say we close this out with a little concern trolling?

As a three-degree alum of the University of Mississippi, I have to say this is embarrassing to Ole Miss. After David Cutcliffe was shown the door after one losing season (which followed the team's first 10-win season in three decades), Nutt rightfully shouldn't feel like he has job security there. Still, the school has enough working against it. Scandals and scoundrels aren't helping its image. Too bad -- a fall Saturday in Oxford is perhaps the best stage for college football that exists.
-- Chris, New Orleans

On that we can agree -- especially the last part.

Gag me.   Don't piss down my back and tell me that that my-town-is-great-and-it-sure-is-a-shame-it-rains-all-the-time, Stewart.