RSSWestern Kentucky Hires Bobby Petrino
December 12, 2012
Johnny Goodman - See all 177 of my articles
Just a quick stop en route another big time job?
How in the hell does Western Kentucky have the chance to hire Bobby Petrino? More importantly why is this guy allowed to coach anywhere?
Right after getting inked to a 10 year contract with Louisville, Petrino left for the friendly confines of the National Football League to head up the Atlanta Falcons.
Things went badly with the Falcons. Michael Vick was in prison, the team was trying to break in a new quarterback and a bunch of young players – the team found themselves at 3-10 and losing 34-14 to the New Orleans Saints. How did Bobby respond? He left notes in the locker room explaining to his players that he was leaving to go back to college football. That is right, he left players notes…did not even have the decency to talk to them…man to man.
Less than 24 hours after leaving the goodbye notes in the lockers….off to Arkansas went good ol’ Bobby P. There he was singed to another large contract. He was going to take Hog Soooooeyy to the next level of the SEC. They had achieved success under Houston Nutt – they even had talented running backs like Darrin McFadden – but the boosters ran Nutt outta town.
Petrino did not last real long at Arkansas either. If you remember it was discovered that he was sleeping with a tall blonde who coincidentally was riding on the back of his Harley when he wrecked in in April of 2012…which in and of itself seems like no big deal. Except Petrino’s was married, the tall blonde was not his wife but instead was a person that he personally selected for a job in the except that he had also awarded her a job in the Arkansas football department over 158 other applicants — and then kicked in an extra $20,000 as a gift to her.
Now Petrino is getting yet another chance. Western Kentucky is hiring him to take over their football program as head coach.
Pretty obviously to me that they are beyond desperation to hire someone who has such an interesting past as this guy. He has shown the propensity to be non-loyal, abuse his position of authority and step out on his family.
Not it appears he is just following the money.
And Western Kentucky apparently has closed their eyes and ears to all of these past problems and just cares about one thing….
Trying to get a winning football team.
A couple of years ago the Hilltoppers made the jump to Division 1. They had a successful 1-AA program. They made the move to the higher class, spent almost $50 million in improvements to their stadium and facilities, and then tanked…..losing 26 straight games over the course of three seasons.
They rebuilt the program, even made a trip to Lincoln to play my beloved Huskers, and with former quarterback Willie Taggart at the helm, the Hilltoppers went 7-5 the last two years.
Taggert headed to Florida to greener pastures and more money, which left the Hilltoppers looking for a new man to run out behind the Orange Blob mascot (what the heck is that thing anyway?)
It is too bad that schools overlook morals, cheating, recruiting violations and other character faults when hiring coaches. I am sure Petrino is just going to use this as a stepping stone after his long fall from grace just a year ago…the question will be…will there be an even bigger school waiting to give him yet ANOTHER chance?
Until next time….Stay classy Carlsbad, New York
