SO yeah, I am a day late and a dollar short on this one. By now it should be common knowledge that Bobby Petrino bailed on the Atlanta Falcons to take the job at the University of Arkansas. Now, it is beyond question, that what Petrino did was shady, and low to the enth degree. When it comes to what he did to his team in Atlanta, and to his boss Arthur Blank, it is beyond reproach. I don’t necessarily disagree with his idea to go back to the college game. But, when it comes to the matter in which he executed his idea I do have an issue, and I tend to agree with Lawyer Milloy’s curt assessment of Petrino as a man.
Now the past transgressions of Petrino are notorious. My personal favorite being the clandestine attepts to ursurp power from Tommy Tubberville with the brass from Auburn flying in and meeting Petrino across the Ohio River from Louisville. This however has to take the cake, I mean, shit, he bailed on his team with 3 games to go. At least Saban had the balls to look everyone in the eye and lie to them while he finished a season before bailing out. Pat Forde, a man who is not prone to this type of linguistic destruction really laid into Petrino.
In the coming days and weeks, the disingenuous drifter will say what Arkansas fans want to hear.
He’ll look at them with blank shark eyes and tell them, in a monotone voice, how excited he is to be the coach of the Razorbacks. He will tell them how impressed he is by the tradition and the fan base. He will tell them that the Southeastern Conference is the place he always wanted to coach (and that might be the one true thing he’ll say, given how many times he’s tried to land a job in the league).
It will be a trumped-up stump speech, as sincere as a politician’s pledge to cut taxes. It will simply be the latest pack of lies in a career full of them.
There are two ways to look at this. The first way, the one currently in the employ of dozens of America’s finest College Football writers, is the tried and true line for Petrino. That he is a completely disingenuous hypocrite, a liar to the T, interested in his own self preservation above all else. That is the line toed by Forde, but he has more of a reason to use it than the others. Given his past history with the coach while he worked for the Courier-Journal in Louisville. But then again, this is pretty much what everyone else has been saying about Petrino, ever since plane gate in 2004. Anyone who has followed Petrino would know all of that, so it should come as no surprise.
The way that I look at this is really simple. Petrino is simply the latest in a long line of coaches to figure out what everyone else has. Namely that the Pro game, for all it’s fabulous riches and opportunities, simply doesn’t compare to the college game. It is, after all, the No Fun League, and there is no one for whom that statement rings truer than for head coaches in the NFL. But the lure for the next big thing, the desire to prove ones self runs very deep in coaches, and for a College Coach that runs very deep. So, many coaches make the trek to the NFL to see what it’s all about, only to realize that it is just not worth it. Yeah you get 3 to 4 million dollars a year. But in return, your employer only asks for 120 work weeks, constant dedication to the company line, but you get no say in matters of personnel, your staff is guaranteed nothing in terms of employment, oh and you’ll get to sleep in your own bed maybe twice a week. Does that sound good to you? There is also the matter that the professional and college games share little in terms of successful strategy. Risk taking and aggression are the hallmarks of good College Coaches. Look at Pete Carroll, the reasons that he is a success at USC, his personality, his enthusiasm, his Überaggressive schemes and his penchant for taking big gambles based on his instincts, more than percentages, are the exact same reasons he had a career record of 34-33 in the NFL. Good College coaches are rarely ever successes at the next level. It only took Petrino 13 games to figure out that coaching in the NFL sucks, and that coaching in College is much, much better. For figuring it out that fas, he should get some credit.
Will Petrino blow off Arkansas at some point in the near future? Yeah, probably, if you are playing his odds. We haven’t learned anything new about Pertino from his actions. Everything he has done in the past few days is predictable. But Petrino learned something new about the NFL, that it sucks, and that it really isn’t worth the money.
