Blame Nutt, Not Masoli, Then Give It A Rest
Monday, August 2, 2010 at 12:10AM 
Embattled QB Fully Entitled
To New Chance At Ole Miss
One Great Season
If you had limited options after a pair of legal incidents led to your dismissal from a major college football team with national championship aspirations, wouldn't you seize the opportunity to study in Oxford if it was presented to you?
EXTRA: OGS Preseason Top 25 Countdown
OK, maybe it's not that Oxford, and maybe even a graduate-level Parks and Recreation program might not require much studying, but don't blame Jeremiah Masoli for accepting an invitation to play football at Ole Miss.
There's no scholarship for Masoli and there's no guarantee he'll even be a starter for the Rebels. It's just a case of a kid who's found trouble now finding a new home that's run by a guy who could really use some depth at the quarterback position. There are more than 100 FBS schools in America; of course one of them was going to pick him up.
ALSO: Images -- Masoli Leads Oregon's 2009 Rout Of USC
And since pointing the big blame finger is just as much a staple of our hate-fueled culture as is the win-at-all-costs approach to major college sports, I'm pleased to announce this story has several options for you.
Decisions, decisions.
Many will continue to rip Masoli, who as a teenager in 2005 was present with friends who jacked another kid's wallet at a nearby high school. They'll also talk about this year's SAE party theft that earned Masoli a one-year suspension from the Oregon football team. Though Masoli pleaded guilty and the case has been closed, did you know that it remains a pretty cloudy one? Seriously, do a little research and you'll know Masoli didn't steal two laptops or a guitar.
And they'll of course cite the non-criminal charge of marijuana possession that ultimately caused Oregon coach Chip Kelly to give Masoli the final boot, a decision that certainly was the right one under the circumstances. But had a dick-ish former teammate not brought him down with the SAE incident, that small amount of marijuana alone wouldn't have gotten Masoli kicked off the team and Oregon would be in everyone's preseason Top 5.
Meanwhile, jealous northerners will blast the SEC, whose most decorated -- or at least its most closely scrutinized -- quarterback in 2010 could be the Throwin' Samoan who ran all over the PAC 10 last fall, leading his Ducks to the conference championship and a berth in the Rose Bowl.
Depending on how drastically Mississippi coach Houston Nutt is willing to tweak his offense, Masoli could be a quiet backup behind likely new starter Nathan Stanley. Or, the Rebels could spend four weeks of August camp installing a more wide-open attack that could turn Masoli into a dangerous weapon against those speedy SEC defenses. I'd love to see the latter, quite frankly.
More likely, though, Nutt will shoulder most of the criticism for being the latest hypocritical coach in big-time sports to use words like "student-athlete" while ambassadoring for his university, then hiring, er, inviting a guy in whom he'd have absolutely zero interest if Jevon Snead was coming back to underachive for a second straight year for the Rebels.
I used to be a little bit of a purist but the reality is that college football coaches are paid to win football games, slightly moreso in the South. I know we like to think many of them are community-minded family men who care deeply about the welfare of their players on a sincerely human level. And that's probably an accurate description of most of them.
But somewhere along the way being a college coach turned into a great balancing act, and in addition to the above-mentioned responsibilities, they have to win games in bunches. And the best way to do that is to bring in good players. Even if one of them is a quarterback who will no doubt be paying baggage fees on his flight to Oxford this week.
So blame our culture, blame college-sports-as-big-business, but quit harping on the actors in this non-drama. Masoli, Nutt and Ole Miss are just doing what plenty other players, coaches or teams in need universities would be doing.
Reader Comments (8)
John, really enjoyed your take on this. I have to agree.
Thank you for a real take on this.
LM: Thanks for the kind words. And oddly, as I wrote this groggily late last night, that was the one final fix I knew I had to make and I forgot, so thanks for the heads up!
Have never read your stuff before but enjoyed your take on Masoli and Nutt... I think most of us out here do wish him the best and hope he's able to walk the line, not just for football season but from now on. Thanks for memories JM, you'll always be a Duck to us.
Go Ducks!
"Seriously, do a little research and you'll know Masoli didn't steal two laptops or a guitar."
You know no such thing. That SI article was a ridiculous fairy tale manufactured by Masoli's PR firm. We'll never know exactly what happened that night, but this new and improved "truth" wasn't it.
If we'll never know, and you're right, then how do you know it was a ridiculous fairy tale?
And I'm guessing you're referring to the SI piece by McKnight? That's certainly the most thorough of the recent Masoli pieces, but definitely not the only one. If you do want to go by only it, however, the online version is four pages long. The first three certainly leave the impression that this case is far from solved, but the fourth and final page -- with the statement by Palmer, the tone of continued locker-room support toward Masoli and the absence of any support for Embry -- seems very telling.
Smithy perhaps you would like to hear McKnight talk about this here: http://audio.1080thefan.com/m/audio/32895445/michael-mcknight-sports-illustrated.htm
Plus, the SAEs were founded at the U of Alabama, so it's just natural he'd play against their rival anyways...
I heard SAE Miami of Ohio chapter is going to start letting heteros in next year?