@SportingLifeArk @jefflongUA blah blah blah blah . . . . hope he enjoys WKU when ASU kicks his butt every year!
Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com catches up with Bobby Petrino in Bowling Green, Kentucky where the former Arkansas coach is now in charge of the Western Kentucky program. It’s a long piece that you can see here. As you undoubtedly know by now, Petrino was forced out at Arkansas after having an affair with a 25-year old staffer and crashing his motorcycle with her onboard. As Dodd frames it, Petrino went from “an SEC program with a top-five national ranking to a fifth-place program in the Sun Belt.”
Here were a few of the quotes that caught our eye.
What if he had immediately confessed the affair to Arkansas A.D. Jeff Long?
“There were a lot of things going on that didn’t allow me to do that. I was in the hospital, medicated.”
On son Nick, a student coach at Arkansas last year.
“I thought it was the hardest thing for him more than anything else. I took something away from him.”
On communicating with his replacement at Arkansas – John L. Smith
“I tried to stay away. I’d send him a text.”
On the kind of program he can create at Western Kentucky
““We can be Boise State. Why not?. We beat them all the time when I was at Idaho.” (That was 1989-91 when Petrino was an assistant)
“My vision for the program is to go to a bowl game every year. I figure I’ve got 14 more years left to go.”
Western Kentucky AD Todd Stewart on Petrino
“We’ve got a guy in the prime of his career. He’s 51 years old and has been to the Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Sugar Bowl in the last six years. Sometimes a school will get somebody like that, but they are 20 years removed.”
Stewart had a binder prepared with 75 candidates when former coach Willie Taggart left for South Florida. But Petrino was his first choice. ”He called back in five minutes.”
Petrino’s Hilltoppers are scheduled to open against Kentucky and then face Tennessee the following week this fall.
