Nick Saban is the best head coach in college football. He recruits exceptionally well, teaches defense better than anyone else, and collects national championships like David Cutcliffe collected Independence Bowl wins at Ole Miss. And for all of that, he is paid in the neighborhood of $5.5 million a year.
Houston Nutt will never be mistaken for Nick Saban. He uses much shorter, nonsensical sentences, and weird hand gestures, speaks in a stream of consciousness manner, and blurts out phrases like "people heppn'" without a trace of irony. He can win or lose to anyone, no matter what the odds are, find ways to lose 14 straight SEC games, and make one fanbase hate him so much they requested that his cell phone records be opened to the public.
For all of that at Ole Miss and Arkansas, he was paid about half of Nick Saban's salary. And that makes sense, because with Nutt, you're getting about half the results, with a side of dog and pony show in a cheap, rented, structurally unsound circus tent.
But despite not stacking up all that well against Saban, he has achieved things that Saban hasn't and probably never will. And I have no doubt Nutt has committed this list to memory for use at his next press conference when a school hires him in a literal act of flushing money down the toilet.
-Back-to-back Cotton Bowl wins for the first time in 50 years
-Studio analyst for CBS Sports Network; not the main CBS show with Tim Brando, Spencer Tillman, and others, but the one that is found on a channel in the 600s or some bullshit on DirecTV
-Signed 37 players in a single signing period
-In a postgame press conference, after losing his 10th straight SEC game by a score of 29-24, addressed a reporter who predicted a 49-10 loss, "Wasn't no 49-10"
-In 2013, lump sum payment of $4.35 million to not coach football
-Since 2007, payments totalling $9 million to not coach football
-Not a joke, $9 million to not do the one thing he was originally paid to do
-I want to set an abandoned building on fire and throw bottles at it while screaming like a crazy person before eventually collapsing on the sidewalk in a pool of sobs
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