Football Feud Gets Hot and Heavy

Whether or not you're a Houston Nutt supporter has little to do with how you should view Friday's "exchange" (for lack of a better phrase) between the Arkansas football coach and Democrat-Gazette sports editor Wally Hall. What should matter is good journalism, not unfounded opinions being spewed forth as fact simply to whip the natives into a frenzy.

In Friday's newspaper, Wally wrote an article in which he listed a number of grievances that he believes Razorback fans still have with Houston Nutt. The article was entitled "Media Not Responsible for Razorbacks' Mess." It should've been titled "Dear Houston." As I re-read the column right now, I believe the same things I did upon first review on Friday: the tone is accusatory, the point is misguided, and the facts are sketchy at best.

To begin with, never once have I heard or read about Houston Nutt blaming the media for this year's football recruiting class. If anything, Houston has taken the stance that this year's class satisfied all the needs his team had going into the off-season. Of course, that's what Houston has to say, or risk being labeled as an excuse artist. But that's just my point: Houston has not played the excuse card whatsoever, so claiming that he's blamed the media for his "difficulties" is not only inaccurate, it's libelous.

Wally's piece starts with that fallacy and degenerates from there. He goes on to claim that he has inside knowledge that since-transferred wideout Damian Williams played the last four games of the year against his own wishes with a separated shoulder. Now I'm the farthest thing from a medical doctor, but I can tell you this much based on my own separated shoulder experience in high school basketball: it is not possible to lift your arm above your waist, let alone catch passes in a football game. Williams would not have been on the field unless he said he was okay enough to play and had received clearance from the Arkansas training staff. To blame Houston for Williams being in the lineup is completely ridiculous.

I won't make this into a point-by-point rebuttal to Hall's article, it wouldn't be worth the time. Besides the fact that I think Wally is generally a pretty engaging writer. But needless to say, there are other quantum leaps in logic that Wally makes, including blaming Nutt for Casey Dick's back injury, alluding to an unnamed player who was forced to drive himself home from the hospital after a severe injury, and referencing low national recruiting rankings, all of which must apparently be Houston's fault alone.

Let me boil it down like this: I'm not a huge Houston Nutt supporter. But I do think the guy is a strong motivator who has shown resilience in weathering several previous pushes for his ouster. And let's not forget that he just won ten games---seven of them in the elite SEC---and certainly deserves kudos for that. On the flip side, there's no question his in-game tactics and decision-making leave a lot to be desired, and clearly he's the kind of person who will say one thing to your face, and then do the opposite, as he did with Gus Malzahn, Mitch Mustain and Damian Williams, among countless others.

Yet there's no way you can do anything other than laud Arkansas' football coach for answering the bell on Friday morning. After reading Wally Hall's morning "attack" in the newspaper, Houston called into a sports talk radio program in Little Rock that Wally co-hosts, and essentially called him out, point by point, for what he said were numerous "inaccuracies." Some will say, as an SEC football coach, Houston should have better things to do than to call into a talk show, but he's not the first big name to do that and he certainly won't be the last. Still, the big point made to me was that Houston stood up for himself and called the writer out, while Wally hushed up and cowered in a corner.

The audio is on the Internet; you can find it if you look for it. Once you hear it, tell me once, in the whole eleven minute clip, where you hear Wally Hall's voice? Tell me once where Wally defended what he wrote and offered factual statements to back it up . . . Can't do it? That's because Hall didn't do it. Instead he clammed up until Houston was done ripping him to shreds and then offered a feeble "I stand by my article."

Having worked in both print and broadcasting, I can tell you this much: it's one thing to be a newspaper writer and let your printed words speak for themselves as the end of the story on a given day. But once you venture into talk radio, once you put on the additional moniker of radio host, then you open yourself up to immediate response and interaction from whoever might be out there listening. And if you get a reaction from your chosen target, you better be ready to step up to the microphone and stand up for your statements. Otherwise, you come across---to me, at least---as scared and shaken, and it makes your initial article look like bloated, unfounded opinion posing as fact.

Say what you want about Houston Nutt, in my book, he won this round by knockout.


-JAB