[CBLCardinals]

Originally Posted by marc

Rumors around that he's actually going to return to Arkansas?? WTF!? It's been said that he's registered for classes.

marc this is true - Mitch Mustain has re-enrolled for classes at Arkansas (paying his way - no longer on scholorship) but not playing on the team.
He will look for another team during the spring, but had to enrolled somewhere in order to stay eligible to transfer to another school.

I live in NW Arkansas and have seen this circus continue..... UGH

Here is a summary (very long) of events this year of "behind the scenes" from another message board in the ongoing Drama.....

Houston Nutt was forced by booster Jim Lindsey to hire Gus Malzahn in order to salvage the 2006 recruiting class, which was on the road to disaster after the '05 season. That season was followed by Nutt's firing of Roy Wittke as QB coach and continued disastrously stupid recruiting of the five Springdale D-IA prospects. Nutt and staff were laughably bad in that process.

The booster made promises, rubber-stamped by an occasionally coherent Frank Broyles, to Malzahn about how much say he would have over the offense. In spring, when one QB was healthy and receivers were scarce, little got done. In August, the plan was for Casey Dick to start at QB with Robert Johnson as backup and Mitch Mustain redshirt. Dick was not healthy enough to practice till September. Then Darren McFadden got hurt in a bar fight and didn't practice from then till the USC game, where he was mostly a decoy.

Nutt demanded that Mustain be inserted in the fourth quarter of the blowout USC loss, and that first possession was the only time we saw Malzahn's offense all season. The Hogs drove down the field in rapid fire and scored a TD.

After USC, Frank Broyles awakened from months of seclusion and ordered Nutt to never allow Robert Johnson to play quarterback again. (This has been a frequent occurrence, Broyles making up Nutt's mind for him.) Nutt named Mustain, not Dick, the starter though he had every intention of starting Dick again as soon as he could. Mustain did not get starter reps in August, and worse, the offense was in constant flux from then on. Nutt asked Malzahn to incorporate plays from Nutt's past playbook, ideas from new QB coach Alex Wood, and additional plays from Mike Markuson and Danny Nutt. The best part about this is all those plays required different sets, calls and protections.

Broyles, who when he coached literally ran the ball 85% of the time, insisted that Nutt push the offense back toward the run. That would have happened anyway with McFadden getting healthy again. In his recent spin, Broyles claims Malzahn was slapped down after giving McFadden just a handful of carries against USC. McFadden was coming off a dislocated toe and hadn't even practiced. He played all he could handle. Broyles is a liar.

In the three games after USC the offense looked scary bad, the defense not much better. Arkansas came so close to losing the Alabama game (surviving only on the ineptitude of the rookie Bama backup kicker), it scared Nutt into dictating a further simplification of the offense away from anything that had been new, back toward the system that had repeatedly caused Broyles to insist Nutt change his coaching staff (from Joe Ferguson to David Lee to Roy Wittke to Wood/Malzahn) in the first place.

That plan surprised the hell out of Auburn, which is always Nutt's target game (you may recall Tommy Tuberville was Broyles's choice to replace Danny Ford, an alumni committee overruled him, and Orville Henry loudly protested in the newspaper). Schedule was relatively easy from there till Thanksgiving.

But the passing game deteriorated due to the running game going back to consuming 70% of practice time. When Mustain threw a pick to open the USC game, Dick came in for good as the starter. He remained even when his performance became abysmal, and Nutt's excuse for not replacing Dick in the LSU game, letting Dick go 3-17 instead, was that he hadn't prepared Mustain to play.

Dick was 10-22 with two picks against Florida, and Mustain didn't throw a pass. Nutt promised Mustain would play against Wisconsin, and this meant he split the 30% of practice time spent on the pass equally between two players--so nobody was prepared to start. Dick was 9-21, Mustain 5-10, and the passing game was Nutt's same old max-protect, no reads, one or two receiver crap that good defenses can handle in their sleep.

In the meantime, Nutt carried on a passive-aggressive campaign attempting to harass Mustain into leaving the team. He asked seniors on the defense harass and belittle Mustain in the locker room, and they did. Nutt's brother asked an acquaintance to send Mustain a now-infamous e-mail, loaded with inside-the-team references, trying to humiliate him and urging him to quit the team.

Why do this to a Parade All-America? Because Mustain represented a different kind of offense, a loyalty to Malzahn, and the promise made to a large part of the 2006 class that the offense would change. It wasn't just Mustain--recruits who came solely because of Malzahn and Wood included FL Damian Williams (decommitted from Florida), SE Marques Wade, FL Carlton Salters (widely recruited from Tallahassee), TE Ben Cleveland (decommitted from Florida) and FL London Crawford (prep All-America). Most of that group will be gone.

After the season, Chris Mortensen learned Nutt was interviewing David Lee about coming back and calling plays. Mort told Malzahn--that's how Malzahn found out Nutt was trying to push him out the door. Malzahn confronted Nutt, who admitted he planned to ask Malzahn to go to the booth, pretending that Lee would be an upgrade.

David Lee coached quarterbacks for Arkansas twice before. Broyles found him another job after the 1988 season, because the wishbone offense looked backwards against good competition. The offense was instantly, dramatically better in 1989. Broyles found him another job (breaking down film for the Cowboys) after the 2002 season, in which the offense was miserable in SEC play and a bad bowl loss. The offense was instantly, dramatically better in 2003. He's a paperweight. A desk ornament.

Malzahn, despite Nutt's increasing strictures, added an element of surprise to the running game that enlivened the offense and created big plays that won games. He also drilled the offensive unit, when he was in charge, to run without mistakes unlike the sloppy efforts before him.

But Nutt ran off Malzahn to complete his reassertion of power after the mini-coup the winter before. Broyles and Nutt are now united in a spin campaign aimed at smearing the reputations of the departed and covering their own asses. Broyles admitted at last week's Dallas Razorback Club meeting that the infamous Springdale parents meeting was about off-the-field issues, despite his previous painting of the parents as concerned only about playing time and how often the Hogs would throw the ball.

You'd think, since the Hogs lost their last three games chiefly on special teams ineptitude, that special teams would be the first priority for change, but as Nutt never knows what to do about special teams, nothing has been done. He has a great thing going, came really close to the pinnacle and might have made it--if he hadn't dismissed the kicker who won August's supposedly open competition because he was a freshman walk-on who would have required a scholarship to play.

Malzahn is much smarter than Nutt and will make a fine college coach elsewhere. Arkansas had its shot, and the fabulously talented McFadden sadly will be a marked man in 2007.