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This Nutt is tough to crack
Posted: Thursday April 13, 2000 07:57 AM
Some events should happen only once in a lifetime. A year ago, I sat in Arkansas running backs coach Danny Nutt's office on his first or second day back to work. Nutt, the younger brother of Razorbacks head coach Houston, had missed three months of work to recuperate from surgery to stop blood leakage around his brain stem. Danny Nutt suffered the temporary loss of his sight, his hearing and control of the left side of his face. He fought back, rehabilitated and recovered all his faculties. Nutt thought he had gone one-on-one with death and emerged a winner. The adrenaline flowed and Nutt figured he could pick up his life where he left off. He returned to coach last fall. On Monday, I sat in Danny Nutt's office again on his first day back to work. In early February, the blood leakage around his brain stem reoccurred. Nutt entered the hospital to undergo surgery again. On the morning of the scheduled surgery, however, doctors discovered the leak had stopped on its own. After two months of rest and recuperation, Nutt is back at work again. The unbridled optimism he displayed a year ago is on the shelf, along with his jogging career and his weightlifting. After the second battle, Nutt understands his life has new, more limiting parameters. When a grown-up gym rat like Nutt gives up the gym, you know he has changed. "I'm going to take it slow," he says. "I'm not going to jog three miles again. I might be 300 pounds and coaching. I just want my life back." Houston Nutt will curtail his brother's non-coaching duties. He frets that the airplane-hopping that Danny endured over the last two weeks of recruiting in late January may have contributed to the blood leaking. "That cabin pressure [changing] probably had something to do with it," Houston says. "Who knows?" Next January, Houston says he will set up Danny in Little Rock and have him recruit from there by car. It is a limitation, one of many, that Danny is willing to accept to continue coaching with his brother. His left eye hasn't yet returned to focusing well. He has increased his daily walk to 10 minutes. He is thankful to be able to do that much. Danny Nutt takes nothing for granted, especially his wife, Carla, and their four girls. "I want this job," Danny says. "This is my dream job. I want to be able to coach and be with [my] family." It's not a lot to ask ... until until you discover that it's no longer a sure thing. Sports Illustrated senior writer Ivan Maisel covers college football for the magazine and is a frequent contributor to CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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