Pictured above: He’s baaaack: New Razorback OC Bobby Petrino (Photos and images courtesy of Arkansas Athletics)
It would be bad enough if Arkansas was rolling the dice on Bobby Petrino at the height of his game. At least then setting their standards aside and swallowing their pride might pay off on the field in the form of copious amounts of yards, points, fantastic offensive recruits and the wins that come along with all that.
But no, Arkansas brass is rehiring an employee who lied, cheated and helped plunge the football program into the depths of despair. As if that wasn’t enough, the guy’s skills seem to have diminished: Fired at Louisville, 18-15 at FCS member Missouri State, backed out on UNLV head coach Barry Odom and was part of the reason Texas A&M fired head coach Jimbo Fisher for underachieving this year. It says something that Texas A&M apparently didn’t give Petrino consideration to take over as head coach.
There’s a reason Petrino was available after the new Texas A&M coach, Mike Elko, chose not to retain him. He’s jumping at this opportunity in Arkansas because it is pretty much all that is left. He is not coming to Arkansas the way he did from the Falcons, with the swagger of an offensive genius, and Arkansas football fans thinking Petrino can recreate the Sugar Bowl run of 2011 are grasping for straws. This isn’t Back to the Future. Arkansas isn’t getting the Michael Jordan who led the Bulls to the six championships. They are getting the MJ who foolishly came back one more time with the Washington Wizards.
However, the UA administration is banking on Arkansas football fans having a suspension of disbelief, and just a couple days in, it is working. Based on the way many folks have been talking, the mood has gone from hateful toward Hogs head coach Sam Pittman to jubilant. Even his neck brace from his motorcycle accident, once a symbol fit for mockery and derision, seems to have become more of a sign of affection from some younger fans who were perhaps 5 or 6 when he last coached at the U of A.
The applause given to Bobby Petrino when ESPN cameras caught him perched in Bud Walton Arena during Arkansas’ win over Duke is part of near tsunami of optimism crashing over Razorback Nation this week. That is a sharp contrast from the “Fire Pittman” stance from many fans last week.
UA students showed their support for the Petrino hire at the Duke game.
Even media member Trey Biddy, who has been thrust into the limelight after his question to Pittman following the Missouri throttling was answered with “I don’t know,” seemed to have a pep in his step as he made his daily appearance on Drive Time Sports.
Issues with Bobby Petrino after Arkansas
Not to rain on the parade, but here are some points of fact and reality that shed some light on Petrino’s ability and behavior, which has supposedly been improved since the motorcycle incident.
Western Kentucky took a chance on Petrino, and after leading them to an 8-4 season, he promptly bolted to Louisville, where he had coached previously. There was no loyalty or commitment toward the folks in Bowling Green who rolled the dice on him.
Petrino did have a mostly good second run with the Cardinals, and part of it had to do with landing potential NFL Hall Fame QB Lamar Jackson. The Cardinals were 9-4, 8-5, 9-4 and 8-5 the first four years he was there. However, the wheels fell off in 2018 with Louisville 2-8 overall and 0-7 in the league. He was fired after 10 games that season. He left with a 77-35 record, which begs the question: How was he fired after one bad season?
Louisville, after all, is not a college football blueblood such as LSU or Auburn, where they fired coaches who won national titles. There were reports that players were not happy with him and as many 20 players were threatening to transfer. A firing after four straight winning seasons at a basketball school would indicate something had gone wrong off the field, which may go against the “due diligence” research Hunter Yurachek and Sam Pittman said they performed on Petrino before making this hire.
At Louisville, was it that rudeness he was known for at Arkansas that finally reared its ugly head? The nature of the departure leads one to question.
It should also be noted that no other Division I schools were rushing to hire Petrino following the Louisville firing, and he had to settle for the head coaching job at lowly FCS Missouri State. At a program that hadn’t won big in 30 years, Petrino did lead the Bears to the playoffs twice but only had an 18-15 record overall.
Pitmman and Petrino at midfield following the Hogs’ win over Missouri State in 2022.
That run wasn’t impressive enough to get a Division I school to offer a head coaching job, so he landed the offensive coordinator gig at UNLV last year with former Arkansas defensive coordinator Barry Odom. He barely touched down in Sin City before he left Odom at the altar to take a sexier, far more lucrative OC job with Texas A&M. Odom was counting on him to help rebuild UNLV.
Despite all the whitewashing that inevitably comes with a new coach hire, Petrino’s reputation precedes him. In 2002, as Auburn offensive coordinator, he was plotting against then-Auburn-head-coach Tommy Tuberville to take his job. He left the Atlanta Falcons during the middle of the 2007 season, which coincidentally is the season in which current Arkansas defensive coordinator Travis Williams played for the Falcons. You’ve got to think their first meeting may be a little awkward.
Petrino has a reputation as a cutthroat narcissist, and the abandonment of UNLV suggests some of that is still there. Why else would you leave a job after a few weeks? If you truly had changed, wouldn’t you turn Fisher down and stay at UNLV? The answer is yes. A leopard doesn’t change his spots.
Houston Nutt knows the deal
Knowing Petrino’s history of backstabbing, Pittman should be at least a little nervous. Sure, they looked chummy enough seated together in Bud Walton Arena, but it would also be easy to assume that this wasn’t his idea, kind of like when late UA athletic director Frank Broyles forced then-head-coach Houston Nutt to hire up-and-coming local high school coach and offensive wizard Gus Malzahn. We all remember how that turned out.
On Nov. 29, during a regular appearance on Little Rock talk show Morning Mayhem, Nutt said this new dynamic is “very, very tough on Sam” because, at this point, Petrino is more popular than him and being hailed as a potential savior. For sure, nobody’s chanting Pittman’s name at sold-out basketball games like they did for Petrino.
“It’s going to be real, real interesting,” Nutt said, “and I feel sorry for Sam a little bit in this situation because he’s still the leader of the team.”
Despite Petrino’s insistence on Hogs Plus that he loves being just a coordinator, I think he’s likely licking his chops, knowing that Pittman’s status is shaky and that with a good offensive season, he could get his old job back. If the administration considers how badly he burned the bridge, that is desperate, but having him on staff opens that door.
In his lone season as the OC for the Aggies, Petrino had an OK run with quarterbacks he wasn’t expecting to play. A&M was No. 25 in the NCAA in scoring offense with a 34.2 points per game average. The Aggies were 53 in total offense with just over 400 yards per game.
Like Nutt said on Wednesday morning, “[Petrino] needs to show more.”
So let’s review Petrino’s resume post-UA firing: 8-4 in one season at WKU, which continued to be successful under former UL quarterback Jeff Brohm; a great stint at Louisville, which included a Heisman-Trophy-winning QB, but the tenure ended with an abject failure of a conference season; just a bit over .500 at Missouri State; fleeing UNLV and an average season as a play caller at A&M.
Tip of the cap to him for a good start at WKU and Louisville, but that isn’t impressive enough to forget about him tromping on the Arkansas employee handbook and tarnishing the reputation of the school. To make this risk worth it, he needs to have won bigger in the last few years. His firing at UL is a red flag. So is the fact that no other coaches besides Odom, who was rebuilding at a perennially losing program, as well as a lame duck in Fisher, seemed to pursue him.
Arkansas football goes down the list
Texas A&M could have saved a lot of money by promoting Petrino, but that proposal would have fallen flatter than the attempt to hire Mike Stoops away from Kentucky. There was zero interest in a guy who was one of the coordinators — none — and no interest from any other programs with vacancies to serve as an OC or head. There was only ironically, Arkansas.
After the Hogs were routed by Missouri on Black Friday, everyone involved in the program understood this was going to be a stormy off-season. Even fans who stood by Pittman for most of the year turned on him. The UA brass was obviously worried that this season would undoubtedly lead to lower ticket sales next season. After proclaiming Sam Pittman as the coach for 2024, it would be tough for Yurachek to ax him. That created a major dilemma.
A splashy OC hire would add optimism, but as some of the top candidates began to decline, the optics became worse. Now, at least temporarily, it appears many in the fan base are happy. That has to be pleasing to the administration. A PR meltdown — or perhaps even worse, rampant apathy — has been averted, at least until the 2024 season. Many in the national media will have fun with motorcycle jokes, etc. Taming the fan base — and more importantly big-money boosters — is the bigger emphasis, especially, as the program rolls out a new NIL collective this week which implores fans to donate.
Arkansas was backed into a corner and went with a quick fix. Petrino is a band-aid on a gaping wound. Yes, there’s a chance this turns into a long-term solution. Those odds are way less than Petrino not living up to his end of the deal on the field and recruiting trail and showing his true colors. It’s been a recurring theme, one we in Arkansas, of all places, know all too well.
Razorback Football’s social media team went to work once the move was made official.
Nutt on parallels to Broyles/Malzahn situation
As a Little Rock native and former Razorback himself, Nutt took the state by storm in 1998 during his first season as the Hogs’ head coach. Back then, Broyles was essentially hands off and let him do his thing, he told David Bazzel and Roger Scott on The Buzz 103.7 FM.
“We took over the state with this unbelievable excitement, passion and got on a roll,” Nutt said.
At times, that’s how Pittman’s run during the 2021 season felt too. For Nutt, after a few years passed, some of his teams showed inconsistency and heading into the 2006 season, Broyles wanted Nutt to bring aboard Gus Malzahn, then Springdale High’s hotshot offensive guru, as the offensive coordinator. All the good vibes of those first few years were gone.
“That’s the worst scenario,” Nutt said. “It’s the worst because it wasn’t like the first two, three, four years. Now it’s different. It makes it harder on the head coach because there’s more pressure than ever, and the bottom line, we all know, is one word. It’s how you spell fun: W-I-N. You’ve got to win. And Coach Broyles was always honest about that. ‘I love the way your players walk across the stage to get their degree. I love that they’re in the community, but I pay you to win.’… It’s not easy in this scenario for the head coach.”
