Les Miles has been the coach on the bayou since Nick Saban left following the 2004 season. However, he wasn’t necessarily the obvious choice to take over the job. There were reports in the midst of LSU’s search that Houston Nutt might be a candidate. That wasn’t shocking considering Nutt nearly left Arkansas the year before to take over at Nebraska.
Bo Mattingly interviewed Nutt on his show this week put this out in the Twitterverse:
Nutt on how close he came to taking the LSU job when Saban left: “I thought there for a while that it might happen.”
— Bo Mattingly (@SportsTalkwBo) August 3, 2016
Which seems ridiculous, but then at the same time you never know. Could Nutt pull wins out of teams with the amazing vein of talent that is Louisiana? Would Nutt have superceded Miles’ lunacy? Would LSU have to have completely shutdown because Nutt would’ve destroyed the football program which is the only thing holding the bankrupt school system together?
The possibilities are an endless twisting nether that I may never be able to fully comprehend, but the real question I have is who would Arkansas have picked up on the coaching block in early January 2005?
Who knows. But it’s intriguing to think what would have happened had Nutt not been around for the McFadden years and if someone capable of managing the Springdale thing had been in charge. What do you think would have happened?