Happy Returns?

[AWK]

Four SEC coaches to visit former schools this season
By CARL DUBOIS
Advocate sportswriter
Published: Jul 27, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

One circled date on the LSU football schedule is Nov. 8, when Alabama’s Nick Saban will be in Tiger Stadium for the first time as a visiting college coach.

It’s one of an unusual sequence of games this year in the Southeastern Conference.

Houston Nutt’s offseason switch from Arkansas to Ole Miss makes Nutt one of four SEC coaches whose current school is a conference and divisional rival of his former school.

On consecutive Saturdays this season, those four will coach against their previous schools — on the visiting-team sideline.


On Oct. 25, Nutt and Ole Miss are at Arkansas.
On Nov. 1, Tommy Tuberville and Auburn are at Ole Miss.
On Nov. 8, Saban and Alabama are at LSU.
On Nov. 15, Steve Spurrier and South Carolina are at Florida.
Those are annual matchups because, in each case, the teams are divisional rivals.

Tuberville has coached against Ole Miss every year since leaving the Rebels before the 1998 Independence Bowl. Spurrier left Florida after the 2001 season, coached the Washington Redskins for two seasons and took a year off before going to South Carolina.

He’s coached against Florida in each of the past three seasons, including a 2006 game in Gainesville, Fla.

Saban left LSU after the 2004 season for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. He coached them for two seasons before accepting the Alabama job in 2007.

LSU defeated Saban and the Crimson Tide 41-34 in November in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The game Nov. 8 in Tiger Stadium will be Saban’s first there since the Dolphins defeated the New Orleans Saints, post-Katrina, 21-6 on Oct. 30, 2005.

Nutt said he probably won’t ask those coaches for advice before returning to Arkansas.

“I don’t think there’s too many coaches that can help me with a place that I’ve been to and raised, where I’m from,” Nutt said Thursday at SEC Media Days. “I’ve been there a long, long time and understand what goes on there.”

If Tuberville were to offer advice, it might sound like what he told reporters a day later.

“You’ve got to be able to focus,” said Tuberville, who is 6-2 against Ole Miss as Auburn coach, including a 4-0 record in Oxford, Miss., where he coached for four seasons.

“If you take any focus away from your football team of what’s going into that game and think it’s about you, then you’ve got problems.”

Tuberville said a game week before a matchup against a former employer should be no different than any other in terms of preparation and schedules. He said a coach also should not pretend there’s nothing extraordinary about it.

“I think the best way to handle it is openly,” he said. “Don’t limit things that you’re going to do. Don’t change anything. Don’t let the players see any change in yourself. Just go be yourself.

“Things happen. This is a business for us. There will be a lot of talk going on that week. I’ve been through it several times. You just take it and understand that’s the way it is, and you work through it and then you go about it the next week.”

Spurrier said it adds some intrigue to the SEC but downplayed the significance of coaching matchups. He was one of several coaches at Media Days who said the games are about — and decided by — the players.

“Really, when the game starts, it’s your team against the other team,” Spurrier said. “It gets down to that.”

Spurrier coached at Florida for 12 years. He said he thinks it’s probably best a coach goes somewhere else after a dozen years, if he can last that long there.

“Most of you know my dad was a preacher,” Spurrier said. “He never lasted 10, 12 years anywhere. It’s time for you to move on. So every three or four years, we were moving.

“They’d already heard all of his sermons — this, that and the other — and there was another place to go. Some people think coaching, after 10 or 11 years or so, maybe you ought to go do it somewhere else.”

That’s how Spurrier felt at the end in Florida, he said.

Nutt was born in Little Rock, Ark. Last week, after repeatedly saying the only game on his mind is the Ole Miss season opener Aug. 30 against Memphis, he conceded it’s special to ponder his November return trip to Fayetteville, Ark.

“You can’t help but think about it,” Nutt said. “You grew up in Arkansas. You thought at one time you’d be there for life. I had 10 great years of experience there working with some great people.”

Three of his Arkansas teams won or shared SEC West championships. Two played in the SEC Championship Game.

“So we had some great days, great times there,” Nutt said. “You can’t help but think what it’s going to be like coming in from the visitor side.

“But quickly my mind goes back to Memphis.”

Last year was Saban’s first back in the SEC. The prospect of Saban coaching against LSU prompted Tuberville to recall his first few games against the Ole Miss players he’d coached before leaving for Auburn.

“All the guys we recruited had laid it on the line for us,” Tuberville said. “We weren’t a very good team when we got there. The coaches and players really got along well. We were a true blue-collar team. We persevered, we sweated, we bled, we cried together.
“When you make changes like that, go back, you have a lot of emotions involved.”

Tuberville’s words about Saban coaching against his former players could easily apply to Nutt coaching against his former Arkansas players.

“I’m sure there’s going to be emotions there,” Tuberville said during that 2007 SEC Media Days session. “There’s always a soft spot in your heart for where you’ve spent a lot of time, done a lot of hard work — especially because the players that have laid it on the line for you are still there, and you’ve got to go up against them and try to beat them, try to do things to make yourself a little bit better than they are.”

When Saban’s mind turned to going back to Baton Rouge for the Nov. 8 game at LSU, he mentioned offseason meetings in which his staff made travel plans for each game.

“We talk about where we’re going to stay and who’s riding what bus,” Saban said during one of many interviews at SEC Media Days. “Someone on the staff said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but when we go down to play LSU, none of us are riding on your bus.’”

http://www.2theadvocate.com/sports/25951559.html?index=1&c=y

I can't wait for the LSU - Bama game this year.  Shoot, I can't wait for practice to start this Saturday.