OT: Petrino Fired (per Joe Schad twitter and ESPN)
https://twitter.com/#!/schadjoe/status/189851517203914752
Bobby Petrino is out at Arkansas
UPDATE (ESPN):
Bobby Petrino will not return as head football coach at Arkansas, multiples sources have told ESPN.com's Chris Low.
The university has called an 8:15 p.m. ET press conference at which time athletic director Jeff Long will announce Petrino will not be back.
Guess you shouldn't ride motorcycles with alleged mistresses.
He turned that program around, but his motorcycle accident and the allegations were too much. Happy Trails to Petrino
Not so much don't ride motorcycles with mistresses as it is don't lie to your bosses about crashing your motorcycle with a 25 year old woman you just hired a week earlier.
...but I don't know if my life is ever going to allow me to put these important lessons to use.
And don't hire your mistress. Employers get steamed over that.
Or just don't be a giant scum bag of a human being.
April 11th, 2012 at 12:03 PM ^
That's asking too much.
Or at least don't crash if you are
April 11th, 2012 at 12:05 PM ^
Maybe he was banging Petrino too. It's gotta be hard to fire a lover.
Don't give the slut 20K!!!!!!!
Well I must say that this has to be one of the few times a team from the SEC took the moral higher ground.
AD Jeff Long is a man of character. He spent some time here as a GA back when I was in school. Doesn't surprise me he'd make the tough, yet proper, decision.
an assistant AD, both for Bo. So, there's that.
Yeah. In a culture all about making money, it is not often you see a person in charge make a decision such as this. Petrino was winning football games and in almost all other situations, that triumphs pretty much everything else.
I know I'm going to get trashed for this, but the Big Ten has no moral high ground on inaction after scandals of this (or higher) magnitude. You can thank Penn State for that, with a dash of OSU for flavor.
It is not that I think other conferences such as the Big 10 are free from scandal. I believe the last year has proven this point. If you make a mistake in the Big 10 vs. the SEC, the chances of receiving a significant punishment for the offense just seems to be much more likely in the Big 10.
"the Big Ten has no moral high ground on inaction after scandals of this (or higher) magnitude."
Penn State and Ohio State have no moral high ground. Don't lump the entire Big Ten into that shit.
I thought Penn State handled their situation about as well as they could have. Once their scandal surfaced they didn't really fuck around. Ohio State on the other hand, can't say the same for them.
WTF?!?!? No, they didn't handle that situation "about as well as they could have". That's the whole point. The inaction of Paterno, Schultz, Curley, and Spanier after learning that they had a potential child rapist in their midst is exactly the reason why that situation became such a huge scandal. Not until the Board of Trustees stepped in did someone in a position of authority at PSU actually do the right thing and halt the staggering breakdown of leadership within the administration. And by that time, the damage had been done.
I guess the Board of Trustees and their actions were what I was referring to. I don't condone covering up for a child molestor at all and I was sickened by the entire story, for the record.
The line "once the scandal surfaced" makes it appear as though once the grown-ups found out they cleaned house. A graduate assistant, head coach, athletic director, the president of the university and others all had prior knowledge and did nothing for years. The only reason Penn State was forced to act was because law enforcement moved in and indicted Sandusky. Now, once that happened, they moved quickly, but if an indictment hadn't happened do you really think PSU would have done anything?
On the very inside, yes, everybody handled it poorly. It's been a while, but if I'm not mistaken, and I very well may be, the only people who knew about it were that grad assistant, his father, JoePa, and the police; all of whom did relatively nothing. Once it was out in the open, it took the University 4 days to fire an iconic coach and face of their entire university despite knowing they would get a ton of backlash from irrational fans and students. I don't know exactly what happened in that case or everybody who knew for that matter, but firing Paterno was a ballsy move on their part. They made the right decision, but it was ballsy.
I hate to keep going back to this scandal, but one thing I'm always struck by that others don't seem to be as offended by. Of the four entities listed above, which one is the most responsible to catching criminals and pursuing justice, an 80+ year old senile senior citizen, a mid-twenties underling, said underling's dad, or THE POLICE? I feel like that is the most offensive part of the entire saga, the complete and utter ineptness of the police force in charge of the investigation.
investigated in '98. I suppose you can try to convince me the administration didn't know.
You've got to be shitting me. The cover up by Penn State was astonishing. Once the scandal surfaced Graham Spanier told everyone everything was super peachy and everyone in the athletic department was super awesome.
Comparing it to some random football related crap at OSU is pure homerism. What happened at PSU is truly sickening.
Gary Moeller would like to have a word with you.
The difference between Moeller and Petrino is that Moeller had no history of sleazyness or unethical conduct when he had his fateful meltdown in '95. Petrino had an illustrious track record of being a snake when Arkansas hired him.
I agree. I was only using Moeller situation as an example of the moral standards that most of the B1G institutions hold themselves to. Gary Moeller got drunk at a restaurant and lost his job over it. If that's not a "no tolerance policy", I don't know what is.
SB Nation is reporting that Petrino was fired because he wouldn't agree to penalties that the school was going to impose.
Well if its per Joe Schad, we can all assume Petrino was fired weeks ago.
cant wait to look up some TWIS-worthy schadenfreude on the Arkansas boards tonight!
I think the hiring his mistress bit may have been the proverbial straw that broke the Hogs back.
he can get a job with the NO Saints now. He'll fit right in.
It would complete the circle. He used Atlanta to go to a higher profile college now. Except he wouldn't be stepping up in college, he'd be stepping back down. At least if he goes to NO he wouldn't have to leave notes on the players lockers to let them know he's leaving after a year.
if Ozzie Guillen is spared in Miami.
But I really couldn't see how you could go on with him as the coach. Would the athletic department be able to go on with Petrino, his mistress, and her fiance all under the same roof? Would keeping Petrino have meant somehow buying off both the mistress and her fiance? In buying them off would you effectively throw them under the bus for what happened?
I figured the AD would take more time to work through everything, but I couldn't see a reasonable avenue to go forward with Petrino as coach.
So Todd Graham takes the job by the end of the month?
April 11th, 2012 at 12:45 AM ^
I must admit this gave me a good laugh. I would upvote you if I could! Imaginary +1 to you!
Wow. The football fan in me is saying, "Why the holy hell would you get rid of a guy who turned your team into a perennial national competitor for something that wasn't even any sort of football violation!!!"
The rational human being in me is saying, "Kudos to Arkansas for choosing character and morals over wins."
I am shocked. Never even thought that him getting fired was a possibility. The class of the SEC is in Arkansas. Let that sink in for a minute.
Vanderbilt?
Vanderbilt isn't even in the SEC.
[performs quick Google search]
Nevermind.
Does anyone even consider Vanderbilt part of the SEC? They are a good academic school that happens to have a football team and that team is curb stomped yearly by guys who are semi-literate.
Vanderbilt is pretty much an implicit exception in any discussion about the sleaziness of the SEC. The sole purpose of their membership is to give the conference a semblance of academic respectability.