Bobby Petrino’s return to Arkansas is a soap opera made for the SEC, but time, points and wins heal all wounds

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — This Bobby Petrino story has to begin with a ground rule for Arkansas’ 2024 season: Sam Pittman has no ego. 

The Razorbacks coach said exactly that regarding his new offensive coordinator during countless offseason interviews. Actually, Pittman doesn’t even have to say it. By hiring Petrino as his play-caller, he is acknowledging three distinct realties: 

Petrino is revered here as arguably the most successful Arkansas coach in the last 35 years.Pittman is on the hot seat, his job definitely in danger.Petrino would be a great — actually, desired — replacement for Pittman.

Ask anyone in these parts with a plastic Hog head atop their dome.

“There’s nobody out there they could have hired who could have calmed the masses [like Petrino]” said David Bazzel, a former Arkansas team captain and local radio personality. 

Nobody except Robert Patrick Petrino — coach, lightning rod, legend, noted motorcycle rider and … coach-in-waiting? His return has turned Arkansas into one of most significant soap operas in a conference full of them since, well … you know. 

It was 12 years ago that Petrino was fired after an inappropriate relationship with a 25-year-old former volleyball player and then lying about it to then-athletic director Jeff Long. The story was TMZ bait — too good (or bad) to ignore. There was a motorcycle (the head Hog on a hog). There was blood. There were cops. There was a neck brace.

There was plenty of outrage. 

“Petrino can’t recruit because every mama who does let him in the door will be shooting him the stink eye,” I wrote back then, advocating for his ouster. “They are wives and mothers, too, just like his wife and his children’s mother, Becky.”

What the critics ignored was that, over time, Petrino’s…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/bobby-petrinos-return-to-arkansas-is-a-soap-opera-made-for-the-sec-but-time-points-and-wins-heal-all-wounds/

Author : Dennis Dodd

Publish date : 2024-08-28 16:01:10

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