Petrino = better X's and O's coach, will attract more skill players
Nutt = better motivator, did more with less
I think I might agree with that.
Bottom line. To hate on Nutt, as Wes and boartitz have you have to pick the snapshots out of his career and arrange them to suit your agenda,
and you have to start by believing Ark. has as much potential as any other top tier SEC program. As I've said, IMHO, they don't, and there's nothing to suggest they do.
Those that have decided a coach sucks will usually do as they've done here and give the coach ZERO credit for his wins, good seasons, etc. and assign him all the blame for anything negative.
Like:
"He won with another coach's players" - Despite the fact that the previous coach didn't win with them, Nutt gets not credit for his early success at either Ark. or Ole Miss in their eyes.
"New staff, new attitude equals early wins...the real Nutt eventually shows up." - Can basically be said about any coach and staff.
"He didn't 'win' anything, he had McFadden and Jones, not a complete team". - After railing on how he ran the program in to the ground due to sorry recruiting, and can't coach but won with another coach's players, he's given no credit for the players he got, or coaching them to their best season(s), because they were star players...the kind that every coach dreams of to make his team better. And we all know you don't coach players like McFadden and Jones, you just send them out on the field and tell them to make a play. See Ronnie Brown, Carnell Williams, Brandon Jacobs, and Tre Smith in the 2003 version of the Auburn Tigers for how that works out every single time.
If you want to say a coach sux, you can usually find a way to fashion some stats to suit that point of view. Bottom line,
I believe that Ark., as long as they're in the SECW, is a perennial 7-9 win team, with a better and worse season or two sprinkled in for good measure, and 3-5 SEC win team. In a good year, they may challenge for the west, but they'll never have all the horses needed to make a run through the west,
and beat the best the SECE has to offer in Atl. Never!
Mark it down. Petrino won't significantly better Nutt's record (won't better it by a winning percentage greater than 5% over Nutt's), and won't win an SEC Championship.