Listened to Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt on "First Call" with Matt Wyatt a few minutes ago. Here are the highlights.

- No news on the coaching staff slipped through. Nutt said before Christmas that he was still evaluating his staff. He did not mention that on the radio but did say in a text to me a few minutes later that he's still evaluating his staff for possible changes. He did not elaborate.

The difficult thing now is it's this staff that's doing the recruiting, and it's a month before signing day. Ole Miss has a collected a nice class of verbal commits. It's trying to hold those together and has hopes of making it nicer.

- More on recruiting. Back on the road today, Nutt says. Matt asked him about philosophy, and Nutt says it's start in Mississippi, spread to the South and jump beyond the South when necessary.

The Mississippi turf war with MSU rages on. By Matt's count, MSU had 60-something Mississippi players on its 2010 roster to Ole Miss' 30-something. That doesn't mean all of those players were evaluated at the level the Ole Miss staff wanted. Ole Miss has had success signing Florida kids, and there's a lot of talent to go around down there.

I do think there's a connection, however, to a kid from several states away becoming disenchanted quicker. It's easier to leave a school when your home is six or seven hours away.

As far as suspensions, becoming distracted and getting in trouble, college kids are capable of that regardless of geography.

- Nutt fielded an off-the-beaten path question at the end from Matt's guest, Buzzy Mize, who asked if Nutt had anything to do with the blue turf at Boise State from his year as coach there in 1997.

Nutt said the turf was there before he arrived and came about basically because Boise got it at a good second-hand price. The Denver Broncos had already purchased the turf and didn't think the shade of blue was exactly what they wanted.

That may be old news on the blue turf, but I was hearing it for the first time.