[...]Alabama | MrSEC[...]…

Uh, yeah. Stop lumping media folks together. I actually only think it's crap for sports fans to use the FOI to try to get the phone records of a coach. Those are fans who take sports a bit too seriously.

That's was the point. And it still is the point… despite so many people trying to present it as something else.

Thanks for trying.

John

You have just made my point. As a fan of a football team, do you really believe who a coach contacts in a personal relationship is your business?

Fifty years ago, coaches were held accountable for wins and losses. Now fans believe they have a right to access coaches' personal lives and phone records. You may think that's a dandy development. I think it's a sign that some fans are taking sports way too frickin' seriously.

John

If you read this blog with any regularity, you know very well that I don't hold folks in my profession in high regard. We screw up. Everyone does. But many — as I wrote in this piece — intentionally stir the pot and fan the flames for the sake of ratings.

However, this piece was about fans crossing new lines. It had nothing to do with newspapers digging for dirt. Go back and read the stories from this site during the Evans story and you'll find that we did not harp on the red panties as everyone else did — probably costing ourselves pageviews — and we expressed sympathy for Georgia's AD.

What I find funny however, is the fact that Nutt's actions somehow make the FOI request by fans a normal act.

Question: What could a list of phone numbers reveal in regards to the Mitch Mustain situation?

As far as me not knowing much, I do know and speak regularly with a number of reporters and sources inside the state of Arkansas. So far, they have all agreed that the FOI requests were an unprecedented — and slimy — attempt to take down Nutt.

I stand by every word in the piece above. Some fans in the SEC are crossing lines that have never been crossed before. That minority is pushing the league in the direction of the old SWC. And that's not a good thing.

John

Like many Razorback fans, I wasn't fazed by the over 2000 text messages between Nutt's "alleged" mistress and himself. However, I WAS outraged by ZERO text messages to recruits during that same 60 day period.

John, any self-proclaimed "big baller/playcaller" that would use a university-owned (and FOI-able) cell phone to text extremely personal late-night data to shapely women not named Diana Nutt, is the same kind of "genius" coach that would call a 7-yard pass to a single SOLITARY receiver on a 4th and 13 play against Bama. Coach Drama is Oxford's problem now.

Nutt's won/loss record was not the motive. Exposing his mistreatment of a player was. How others took the info and ran with it afterward doesn't change the original motive.

The intent was to merely expose the fact the administration was allowing harassment of student-athletes to not only occur, but to continue. Surely you are not IN FAVOR of football coaches using close family friends to orchestrate harassment campaigns against their own student-athletes, are you? I don't believe for one second you would look the other way if student-athletes on your favorite team(s) were being harassed by their own coaches.

FWIW, I said small fraction of a much larger STORY, not small fraction of the fanbase. It was not just a "small group of nutso fans" as you continue to suggest. MANY people tried to go through the athletic department, the Chancellor's office and nothing was done. The media was sitting on the exact same information and would not risk losing their access to the program by reporting it. There were no other available options left to put an end to the mistreatment of student-athletes on the Arkansas campus. You claim the original intent was to merely embarrass or "tear down" Nutt which is totally false. AGAIN, it was to force the administration and the Board of Trustees to PUT A STOP to the harassment of student-athletes, PERIOD.

You comparing what happened at Arkansas to the lone act of Updyke or some death threats to Kiffin's family by people who still don't know each other is ludicrous. You also ignore the fact the AJC used FOI's to find out the salacious details of who was in the car with the ex-UGA AD where the intent was focused on his personal life. Bloggers and people in print/TV/online media use FOI's EVERY SINGLE DAY to gather information. Where's your blog post calling the AJC and bloggers like yourself "evil"? Or are you guys just special and only special people are entitled to such an effective information gathering tool?

Why don't you do a story on Nutt's wife stating in an email that was retrieved off a computer owned by the State of Arkansas Finance & Administration that she wanted to take a 2×4 to Mitch Mustain's mother? For reference, an evicted tenant of hers did just that a few years earlier yet Diana Nutt was celebrating such an act of violence. Why don't you do a story on Nutt threatening anyone who dared complain to the Board of Trustees with personal lawsuits? Oh wait….you CAN'T use those facts in your story because it doesn't support your uneducated conclusions about the Nutt FOI's being unprovoked "evil". The threats coming from the Nutt camp towards ANYONE who dared question his actions related to his job just confirmed it was the RIGHT course of action to release the FOI'd information. Even with the information public, he still threatened to come after several people even though he had no intention because he would have had to produce his SIM card and be deposed exposing his involvement in student-athlete harassment.

Again, I really like your blog, but you don't seem to know much about what actually transpired from December 2006 to November 2007 at Arkansas. Using the Arkansas FOI's destroys the credibility of your message related to Updyke and Kiffin death threats.

Arkansas indeed has some lowlife fans, just like every other team. But at least we got rid of our lowlife, lying, player-harassing coach.

It IS a small fraction of the fanbase. I wrote that in in the story. A small group of nutso fans spread across all 12 schools are acting more ridiculous these days. That was the point.

The bottom line is this — FOI's were used to bring down a football coach. Fans have never done that until the last 3 or 4 years and it's ridiculous. The fact that those documents were then released — with no one bothering to black out texts and phone numbers — sure led to allegations of an affair. And I don't for one second believe the people who released that info had any problem with that at all.

Finally, did I write that the personal info was the intent? The intent was to tear down Nutt. And once the information was gained, the only story that stuck was the affair story.

But defend away. If you believe fans need to be FOI'ing their coaches' phone records, go for it. When it comes to my teams, I think I'll just watch 'em play, pull for 'em, and then go on with my life rather than filing FOI requests.

John

Houston Nutt had his close friend sending threatening emails to his own players. Frank Broyles would do nothing about it. The Chancellor would do nothing about it. The Arkansas media wouldn't report on it or was scared to do so even though they had the same FOI'd information which was discovered with, you guessed it, FOI'd info. It's no secret media access had been cut off by both Nutt and Broyles if anything negative surfaced in the media. When no one else would act, financial supporters of the program did. Don't tell us we are not in touch with reality when you seemingly don't have any grasp on the reality of what was actually happening. You have an excellent blog, but you are dead wrong on this one.

What is incorrect in our piece? Did a few Arkansas fans not use the FOI Act to gain access to Nutt's phone records? Did they not release those records to show that he'd made thousands of contacts to a woman outside his marriage?

Nutt's handling of Arkansas has nothing to do with fans using the FOI Act to attempt to bring him down. I can't recall any other coaches being attacked via fans chasing cell phone records. If you don't see that that's a pretty big change in how some fans in today's society operate, then I'm afraid it shows that you, too, are out of touch with reality.

If your coach doesn't win, don't buy tickets. But to try and grab cell phone records? Sorry, that's not what the FOI act was designed for — for fans trying to find out why Mitch Mustain transferred.

"No one intentionally smeared any names and had the intent of destroying lives." Really, well I guess folks didn't have to release those records to the press, did they? Or they could have blacked out some of the numbers, couldn't they?

The fact that anyone is defending such a bizarro, nutjob act — viewed as a bizarro, nutjob act by good sports journalists everywhere but Arkansas — is incredibly disheartening.

John