Houston Nutt explains signing day forged signature

During an appearance on Rivals Radio with Bill King, Houston Nutt explained the Floyd Raven signing day situation.

Raven, a defensive back out of East St. John HS in Louisiana, was committed to Ole Miss in the days leading up to signing day.  On Wednesday morning, Houston Nutt and his staff received a signed National Letter of Intent.  One problem…Raven’s signature was forged and faxed in by his mother.

The signing was announced by Ole Miss.

Nutt explained, "The next thing you know, we get a call from Floyd.  There was some hesitation.  He said, ‘Coach, it was my Mom.’ I said, ‘Your Mom is really smart.’  After a 20 minute conversation, I knew he wanted to go to A&M.  I said go ahead and go to A&M, we’re gonna tear this one up.”

"The only thing that looked funny was the name was printed and then it was signed.  We actually said, ‘Send another one in.  It doesn’t look quite right.’  There was a little bit of hesitation there.  It was crazy.”

Nutt admitted he had never been around anything quite like this situation on National Signing Day.  

“It’s a tough, tough decision.  There are master salesmen at each school.  My thing is that I want them to want to be here.”

For Nutt and his staff, the significance of this signing class was taking care of the state of Mississippi.  He explained, “We took care of home.  We took care of the home-state.  With no bowl game, all our guys did was recruit, recruit, recruit.”

Perhaps the biggest signee was 5-star linebacker CJ Johnson.  Nutt said, “He’ll be in the mix early on and have a chance to start.  He’ll also be on the kick-off team, you know that.”