“That was a long time ago to be honest with you, you don’t recall things like that.  I was told about it.  Obviously, I’ve got to be more aware of my actions and my language.

We’ll work on improving that.”

As a refresher for the coach, LSU had just tacked on a field goal to go up 41-17 with five minutes to go.  Petrino pointed across the field and let the F-bombs fly.  After the game, he cold-shouldered Les Miles, as well.

Since the incident, Arkansas AD Jeff Long has expressed his dissatisfaction with CBS for showing a slow-motion replay of the tirade… even though CBS and ESPN have caught and aired curses from Nick Saban, Will Muschamp and others this past season.

Interestingly, on December 5th, Long was asked if he’d addressed the issue with Petrino.  He said the two had had a conversation.  But Petrino said this weekend that he hadn’t spoken to Long about the tirade.

Well.  Long just said they’d had a conversation.  He never said about what.

Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long says that he’s “disappointed” with SEC broadcast partner CBS for showing a replay of football coach Bobby Petrino hurling some seriously foul language at LSU’s Les Miles two Saturday’s ago.

“Professionally, I’m disappointed at the way that CBS portrayed Coach Petrino on the sideline.  I think it’s one thing if it’s (broadcast) live and they catch a coach using language, that’s one thing.  But I’m disappointed they chose to record it and shot it later… and further that they showed it in slow-motion so words could be made sure they could pick it up…

Certainly none of us like the use of profane language.  Certainly it happens in the heat of the battle and it’s unfortunate.  But I think in this case, I’m disappointed in the way it was (handled) by CBS…

I can tell you no coach wants to be seen on national television using profane language.  But does it happen?  Absolutely.  And, like you say, the heat of the moment to get a point across.  It’s not something that people should be shocked by, but, again, we don’t like the use of the language like that, certainly, where it can be shown, and, being honest with you, taken out of context.”

Long has expressed his concerns to the SEC office but has heard nothing back.  He also said he’s spoken with Petrino about the incident.

Where to start?

How about with Long deciding to bring this back up and put a spotlight on the issue once more.  Not smart.  The story was dead, now Long has unearthed it.  And he made a whole lot of excuses in the process.

Long blamed CBS for showing the clip as though they’re supposed to go out of their way to make every SEC coach look good.  CBS and the SEC have a good relationship, but you can be sure there’s nothing in the contract between the two that forces CBS to puff up the conference or its teams or its coaches.  There’s no “Thou must cover our butts whenever possible” clause.

Long also suggested that foul language is used often and that it shouldn’t be shown via replay or in slow motion.  Well, it is.  Often.  And sometimes in slow motion.  Not to mention the fact that when a coach points his finger at another coach and tosses F-bombs, well, there’s not a broadcaster in the country that wouldn’t show that.  Cursing may happen on sidelines, but firing a “F*** you, M***** F******” at a rival coach is pretty dadgum unusual.

Finally, Long suggested that the video was taken out of context.  How?  Was Petrino pointing at a water boy?  An official?  An opposing fan?  Would that make his words any more acceptable?

Now personally, I wasn’t offended by Petrino’s language in the least.  They’re only words.

That said, I was surprised to see him aim them at a rival coach.  First time in 40 years I’ve ever seen an SEC coach utter those words to another SEC coach in full view of television cameras.

If Long’s going to be upset about something — and it seems he’s more bothered by the language than anyone here at MrSEC.com is — then he should talk to, ya know, the guy who actually hurled the bad words while standing on the sideline in, ya know, full view of every camera in the stadium.

CBS was trying to make a blowout interesting.  Petrino’s the guy that gave them the opportunity to do it.  And ESPN, ABC, FOX and any other sports broadcaster would have handled that piece of tape in exactly the same way.

Bottom line?  Long should have passed on any questions about the cursing episode at this point.  It was old news until he started making excuses for his coach.

Petrino’s message to Miles from across the field was caught by CBS cameras and, well, if you can read lips it’s not hard to figure out what he had to say:

After the game, Miles tried to speak with Petrino, but the Razorback coach wanted no part of that conversation:

Now one could easily defend Miles for trying to put more points on the board.  His squad is playing for a slot in the BCS title game and style points might count to the human voters.

But Miles needs no defending.  A week earlier he took his foot off the gas and had his team kneel four times at the Ole Miss five-yard-line with five minutes to play.  He was ripped for that move, as well, so perhaps this time he decided to err on the side of running it up.

Or perhaps Miles fears Arkansas a bit more than Ole Miss when it comes to the recruiting trail.  The Hogs have reached the 10-win plateau two years in a row at this point.  Perhaps LSU’s coach wanted to show recruits the difference between his squad and Petrino’s.

Whatever Miles’ motivation, Petrino was in the wrong.  Mainly because Petrino hasn’t exactly been Bobby the Lenient this year, either:

51-7 over Missouri State — five of last 13 plays were passes

52-3 over New Mexico — scored last TD up 45-3 with 4:28 to play

38-14 over Auburn — scored last TD up 31-14 with 5:50 to play on pass from starting QB

44-28 over South Carolina — scored last TD up 37-28 with 4:07 to play

49-7 over Tennessee — scored last TD up 42-7 with 6:37 to play

44-17 over Mississippi State — scored last TD up 37-10 with 3:20 to play

Petrino has done a fantastic job in Fayetteville and he’s turned the Razorbacks into a national power.  But he’s no longer at Louisville.  Sure, he can still win big with his potent offense, but he’ll need to field a top-flight defense if he ever wants to win an SEC championship.  Until he gets himself one of those, it’s likely he’ll continue to find himself in situations like the one that so riled him up on Saturday.

With Tennessee visiting this weekend, none other than the former Arkansas quarterback has been named the Hogs’ honorary team captain.

Will that decision bring about some bad mojo for the Razorbacks?  Not necessarily.  Many people forget that the following year, Stoerner led Arkansas to a 28-24 win over #3 Tennessee which dashed the Volunteers’ hopes for a return to the BCS Championship Game.

According to Robbie Neiswanger of ArkansasNews.com, Wade said, “I was wrong.  I thought he had the ball.”  When asked about the little hopstep he made as bobbed to the sideline post-hit, Wade said, “I thought I just made a good play.  That’s all I can say about that.”

Wade also apologized for any embarrassment he act may have caused the Arkansas program.

Wade’s apology is a step in the right direction.  We don’t believe the young man should be suspended for the remainder of the season, booted from the Arkansas team, or drawn and quartered as some have suggested.  (The drawing and quartering is an exaggeration, for you literalists out there.)

But we do feel — as we stated earlier today — that he should receive a full-game suspension from the SEC for his hit.  It was the kind of play that needs to be held up to all league players as an example of what not to do.

An inch or two this way or that way and we could be talking about a very serious injury today.  For Vandy’s Jonathan Krause or for Wade.  The league must crackdown on players launching themselves to make helmet-to-helmet hits.

As we’ve seen this season, Mike Slive usually hands down half-game suspension for fighting, flagrant fouls, cheap shots, etc.  But Wade’s hit on Krause Saturday wasn’t a chop block to the knees or a haymaker thrown in anger… it was a dirty lick that could have left Krause seriously injured.  Or worse.

After the hit, Wade celebrated as Krause lay on the ground.  After his ejection, Wade had to be escorted to the Razorbacks’ locker room.

Krause eventually got up and returned to the game.  He was lucky.

After the game, Bobby Petrino said that he didn’t see the hit.  “It sounded like he hit him — the ball wasn’t even close to the returner.  We have to be able to look up and recognize where the ball is and get away from him.”

Fair enough.

But Wade needs a game off courtesy of the SEC office.  Football is a brutal sport and good and bad decisions are made in milliseconds.  This was not just a bad decision.

Wade launched himself into a defenseless punt returner.  Then he celebrated the hit as his victim stayed on the ground.  Then he seemed angry about his ejection.

It appears to us that he needs more time to come to a full understanding that the hit and the post-hit behavior aren’t acceptable and that the ejection was absolutely appropriate.

Not surprisingly, there are defenses of Wade’s act floating around the internet today.  “Aw, he didn’t mean anything by it.”  Nonsense.  To anyone without a stake in Saturday’s game that is nonsense.

And to anyone who doesn’t think defending Wade is utter nonsense, please remove the plastic pig from off thy head and ask yourself what you would be saying today if a Vanderbilt gunner had launched himself helmet-first into the head of Arkansas return man Joe Adams… after he’d already signaled for a fair catch.

That’s what we thought.

Wade deserves a full week suspension.  Such action would send a message to the player and to every other punt team gunner in the SEC — you can hit and hit hard… but you can’t hit dirty.

Until late last week, Texas politicians had given Texas A&M a free-pass to exit and head east to the Southeastern Conference.  But now legislators are worried that Texas and Texas Tech could bolt from the Big 12 and race west to the Pac-12.  Some/many/most politicos in Texas don’t want to see that happen.  So…

According to Orangebloods:

“Sources said the reason lawmakers are hot is that they received assurances from the Big 12, including (UT president Bill) Powers, that the Big 12 would survive without Texas A&M.

And because of those assurances, lawmakers did not take an aggressive stand against Texas A&M withdrawing from the Big 12.  But that may be changing.

Sources said members of the Legislature are or will be reaching out to Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin to tell him the Aggies may no longer have the blessing of lawmakers to leave the Big 12, especially if it looks like the Big 12 will collapse.”

In addition the site claims that Big 12 sources have said there is “an increasing likelihood of litigation” against the SEC.

Good luck to the Big 12 on that front.

The Big Ten began the expansion craze last summer.  The Pac-10 then began flirting with Texas and others in an effort to swipe four- to six-teams from the Big 12, which would have extinguished the conference in one push.  The Pac-1o was conducting an all-out raid last summer.  By comparison, the SEC simply answered a phone call this July.

When the smoke cleared in 2010, Nebraska had left for the Big Ten and Colorado had departed for the Pac-12 (as it’s now called).

Unless the judge overseeing such a silly case attended Baylor, the Big 12 would have a hard time convincing any sane person that it was actually the third school out the door that destabilized the league.  Especially when Oklahoma president David Boren has been making comments like this to the press:

“The Big 12 is not the same Big 12.  I was extremely disappointed when Nebraska departed.  Disappointed when Colorado departed.”

Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel also stated last week:

“Obviously we have some issues in our league… When Nebraska leaves one year, Colorado leaves and then also now Texas A&M.  So it’s three real good football teams (that) are leaving.”

Do a Google search and you’ll find countless other Big 12 figures who’ve been publicly stating the obvious — that Nebraska and Colorado exited and hurt the league a full year before A&M started looking for an escape hatch.

But while a tortious interference case would likely be hard to prove, that doesn’t mean such a lawsuit still couldn’t gum up the works for Mike Slive and the Aggies.  The mere threat of a lawsuit could cause SEC presidents to slow down out of fear that the person hearing such a case really would be a Baylor grad… angry that his Bears are in danger of being left for dead in this round of realignment.  (Nevermind the fact that the Bears left TCU, SMU, Houston and Rice for dead when Baylor jumped to the Big 12 without remorse in the mid-90s.)

Back in 2003, several Big East schools filed suit against the ACC for a raid that netted the Southern league Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech.  In 2005, the ACC settled that suit for a grand total of $5 million.  Pocket change.

But television contracts have jumped to another level since 2005 and the Big 12 — whoever’s left of the Big 12 — would likely ask for a cool billion of SEC cash.  Well, even if there were just a 1% chance of losing that kind of cash, the SEC would need to do some serious risk/reward analyses.  Perhaps the league would decide to stand pat and not offer A&M a landing spot.  If that were to happen, would the Big 12 then be forced to re-admit a suddenly homeless Texas A&M?  Now that would be a happy, long-lasting marriage, to be sure.

Bottom line?  This thing isn’t over, folks.  In some ways, it may just be getting started.

Oh, boy.  Great.  ’Cause who wants to talk about football?

UPDATE — Pete Thamel of The New York Times reports that Judith Zaffirini — the chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Committee in Texas — claims the state senate has no intention of getting involved in conference expansion and realignment.

Now the Big 12 will have to move on to fallback candidates like BYU.

We at MrSEC.com have not spoken to a sole at the University of Arkansas, in the Arkansas media, or in the Arkansas fanbase who hasn’t guffawed, horselaughed or hee-hawed at the idea of UA leaving the stable SEC for the unstable Big 12.

Harry King of ArkansasNews.com explains the situation as follows:


“Thamel admitted Notre Dame and Arkansas are longshots.  As for Arkansas, longshot does not come close to describing the Razorbacks’ status.  Longshot indicated there is some chance.  Occasionally, longshots win at Oaklawn Park.”

Let’s put this one to bed.  Arkansas is not going anywhere.

The Palm Beach/Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel reports that Nutt called Shapiro on December 7th, 2006 and spoke to him for 30 minutes.  The coach then hung up and phoned his agent, Jimmy Sexton.  And then he called Shapiro back.

All this info comes from the phone records of Nutt, acquired in 2007 via the Freedom of Information Act.

Most likely, Shapiro — Miami’s biggest booster at the time — and Nutt were chatting about the head coaching search going on in Coral Gables at the time.  Obviously things didn’t work out between Nutt and the Canes.  Miami hired by-the-book Randy Shannon.  Nutt coached one more season in Fayetteville before leaving for Ole Miss… with torch-bearing Razorback fans on his tail.

In 2007, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette tracked down Shapiro who said: “Somehow, some way that information ended up in front of me that he would be a viable candidate for the job.  There was no real meat to it.”

None of this ties Nutt to any wrongdoing, of course.  He was in contact with a school’s biggest booster.  Those things happen all the time as coaching searches play out behind the scenes.

Still, if you’re an Ole Miss fan today, do you want your coach’s name tied in any way, shape or form to Shapiro?  Here’s betting Nutt would’ve preferred this never came out.

As part of a tour prank, Arkansas-based group Eden’s Edge recently stole the West Virginia welcome mat that country star Brad Paisley keeps in front of his tour bus.  They replaced his WVU rug with a Razorback rug.  Video here.

Paisley — a West Virginia native — responded by lighting fire to the Hog rug.  His salvo was also captured on tape.

Well, whoops-pig-sooie… some folks might not like that.

Of course, anyone taking offense at a harmless prank like this really isn’t worth worrying much about: