COMMENTARY —
When it comes to the sordid situation of Bobby Petrino, you don’t really know whether to laugh, cry or cuss, especially of you are an Arkansas Razorback fan.
Assuming such fans are few and far between in these parts, allow me to share a bit of funny business from an acquaintance of mine in the radio business, Terry Meiners of WHAS in Louisville. Read it aloud like the guy in the “Don’t get stuck with...” commercials for DirecTV. (I had to santize it slightly for a family newspaper.)
When you are an offensive genius, you get a job in the NFL.
When you get a job in the NFL, you lose games.
When you lose games, you take a job at Arkansas.
When you live in Arkansas, you get bored.
When you get bored, you go looking for strange.
When you go looking for strange, you find strange.
When you find strange, you take it for a ride on your motorcycle.
When you take strange for a ride on your motorcycle, she reaches around and grabs you in a sensitive place.
When she grabs you in a sensitive place, you wreck your motorcycle.
When you wreck your motorcycle, you end up at a press conference in a neck brace.
Don’t end up at a press conference in a neck brace. Switch from cable and upgrade to DirecTV.
There are those would say if Petrino were looking for strange, all he would have to do is check a nearby mirror.
All of which brings up the question of the day: How much of a winner does a coach have to be before a school overlooks the fact that he is an out-and-out creep? Conversely, how creepy does a coach have to get before they overlook all the wins?
Hoover High had ot ask this question with Rush Propst of “Two-a-Days” TV series fame. The answer was: When we find out he’s violating AHSAA rules and keeping a second family on the side at the same time, that might be barely enough to let him go.
Petrino has given teams in the college and pro ranks plenty of reasons to ask this question over the years. The folks at Louisville started asking when one of Bobby Lowder’s airplanes showed up across the river in Indiana, apparently to talk to the coach about a job opening at Auburn.
He later ended up with the Atlanta Falcons, ostensibly to tutor a young Michael Vick to stardom as a playmaking quarterback. Vick, of course, saw other opportunities in another sport — dogfighting — and ended up in jail. Petrino bailed 12 games into the NFL season to take the Arkansas job. Not exactly a professional move, unless it wasn’t your choice. That happens sometimes.
So now Petrino goes from Top Hawg to hog meat, and the mistress whom he hired for a job in the athletic department is out the door as well, though with a modest financial settlement. And in comes John L. Smith, whom Petrino actually replaced at Louisville. Smith had just departed Fayetteville as special teams coordinator, after a stormy stint in the head job at Michigan State; he took the Weber State head job last December.
I just hope he doesn’t go looking for strange, too.
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