The Houston Nutt Game: 2008 Edition

Our lecture begins today on the subject of the phenomenon known as "The Houston Nutt Special." Observed on an annual basis since the beginning of Nutt's career in the SEC, the "Houston Nutt Special" is best defined as the sudden, crushing, and zany defeat of a ranked team by a less-ranked or even unranked Houston Nutt-coached team despite the best predictions of pundits, coaches, and nearly everyone else sizing up the pregame landscape.

For a superb example of this phenomena, please see today's victory for Ole Miss over Florida for a superlative display of Houston Nutt's ability to reverse the poles of reality to his liking. Florida, a team with zero turnovers on the season going into the game, coughed up three fumbles in the third quarter alone, giving the ball to the Ole Miss offense in Florida territory for easy scores. Also indicative of the Houston Nutt Game: victory despite obvious advantages on the stat sheet; Florida had 26 first downs to Ole Miss having ten, went 5-15 on third down to Ole Miss flopping 1 for 11 on third down conversions, and outgained Ole Miss 443 to 325 overall in yardage.

(Correction: in the haze of my grief and rage, I inverted the stats: Ole Miss owned Florida on first downs with 26, just another jagged hole the Rebels cut in Ole Miss. Thanks to commenter rebel8.)

The most notable feature of the Houston Nutt Game is despite all the numbers, the man usually stands victorious on the sidelines by a slim margin at the end. Last year, it was Darren McFadden's endless stamina that edged out LSU for what at the time could have been a championship-derailing defeat; this year, it was the ferocious play of Greg Hardy and the Rebel defensive line, who kept Tim Tebow scrambling for his life and limited him to 15 carries for 7 yards, that kept Ole Miss in the game when Florida had seemingly put themselves back in contention.

Throw in the fact that every single one of the nine passes that Jevan Snead actually completed mattered--most especially the wide open bomb to Shay Hodge and the gorgeous touch pass to Cordera Eason on a screen, both for TDs--and the formula comes together to equal a stunning upset for Ole Miss and one less pesky undefeated team to worry about for pollsters. (Thanks, Urban. Going for that final first down with a play everyone knew was coming made putting together the top five this week so, so much easier.)

How to cope with this unstoppable phenomena, one might ask? Simple. If you are ranked in the top ten and scheduled to play Ole Miss while Nutt is their coach, attempt to reschedule for a weekend when Ole Miss will be ranked, or even favored. Tell them you have a doctor's appointment, or that the cable guy's coming over but you don't know when, or better yet, that you have a nasty and contagious skin infection that is spread on contact. Trust me: as someone who just watched Florida go into some sort of voodoo swoon for four quarters against the power of the "Houston Nutt Special," it's at least worth a try.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.