It hasn't been this easy in five years. Hasn't been this peaceful, this fulfilling, since Mustain first stepped on the field as a sophomore at Springdale High School in Arkansas and the wave of fame grew and grew until it broke and engulfed everything and everyone around it.

Family, friends, boyhood dreams; all crushed under the enormity of something Mustain never had control over -- and never really wanted, anyway.

He just wanted to play football -- is that too much to ask?

"It's a whole different place out here," Mustain says. "I can't say that's a bad thing."

It is, more than anything, a world away from the soap opera that sucked the very life out of a player, a program and a popular head coach -- and left everyone still hesitant to talk about events that could fill the pages of grocery store tabloids for weeks.

Mustain won 61 of 63 games at Springdale, a city so close to the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville that if you Called The Hogs loud enough at Reynolds Stadium, they'd stand in Springdale with arms waving. If ever there were a high school star born to play at Arkansas, Mustain was it.

"It's all he ever talked about," says Arkansas kicker Alex Tejada, Mustain's best friend. "It's all he wanted to do."

If only it were that simple.

Mustain and three other Springdale stars signed with Arkansas in 2006. Springdale's coach, Gus Malzahn, was named offensive coordinator by Razorbacks coach Houston Nutt. The season began seven months later, and the stories of how it all unraveled differ. Arkansas won 10 games in '06 and played in the SEC championship game. Seven of those wins were engineered by Mustain, who won the starting job after the season-opening loss to USC and didn't relinquish it until the first throw of his eighth start (against South Carolina) was intercepted. He never started again and left for USC shortly after the end of the season.

It is here where things get downright messy, vindictive, hurtful and eventually irreconcilable.

"Everyone thinks they know the reason," Nutt says. "I don't know if anyone really does."

Brian Bahr / Getty Images Mitch Mustain went 7-0 as a freshman starter for Arkansas in 2006.

One thing is certain: The beginning of the end revolves around a book about Springdale's 2005 season. Two weeks before Mustain's last start, the book was published, and in it Mustain talked about his recruitment and said Arkansas would "have a better chance of getting me" if Nutt were fired.

"That didn't help his presence in the locker room," says one former Arkansas player. It didn't help his play on the field, either. In the two games before his benching, Mustain struggled with his accuracy and command of the offense.

Meanwhile, backup Casey Dick was getting healthy and playing well in practice, and it was easy to make the switch.

"Mitch was distracted, no question," Malzahn says. "That book complicated things."

It also didn't help that the offense both Malzahn and Mustain favored -- a pass-oriented attack that Nutt promised they could run -- had morphed into one that, at Nutt's behest, fed talented tailbacks Darren McFadden and Felix Jones.

A week after the season, Malzahn left to join the staff at Tulsa. Not long after that, Mustain asked for his release and eventually followed wide receiver Damian Williams, another Springdale star, to USC. Once the Springdale connection at Arkansas was disbanded, the feeding frenzy began.