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PETRIN-UH-OH: FALLOUT FROM A CRASH
Just a note
There are some aspects of this have caused some frivolity across Twitter and the like, but let's leave the Petrino family and Jessica Dorrell's fiance out of this. They didn't ask for this attention and aren't the ones who made the grave mistakes. Please give them your respect, and your thoughts and prayers would be even nicer.
Earlier on Team Speed Kills: Bobby Petrino Placed on Paid Administrative Leave
The Woman on the Back of Bobby Petrino's Motorcycle: What Was She Doing There?
This is the clause that might decide whether Bobby Petrino still has a job
This is something that the Arkansas administration would probably like to get rid of. The only way to do that is to fire Bobby Petrino, and the only way to do that without paying an absurd amount of money is to fire Petrino for cause. Which means they would have to rely on the behavior clause of the contract, which the AP helpfully looked up.
Petrino signed a new seven-year contract in December 2010 after completing his third regular season at Arkansas. The contract, which was for an average of $3.53 million annually, had a clause in it that would allow Arkansas to dismiss Petrino for "engaging in conduct, as solely determined by the university, which is clearly contrary to the character and responsibilities of a person occupying the position of head football coach or which negatively or adversely affects the reputation of the (university’s) athletics programs in any way."
Personally, I would fire him. His judgment has been called into serious question and I'm not sure that he can be the kind of moral authority you need in a college football coach. But that's not the main reason I would look at getting rid of Petrino.
The affair here is the tabloid aspect of this, but the reasons to dismiss Petrino can be boiled down to two less-sexy but also-old fatal mistakes: A cover-up and the decision to mix one's personal pleasure with his professional demands. Even if the affair itself isn't enough for you to think about cutting Petrino loose, the cronyism and deception should do the job.
The money quote
If you needed an example beyond the statement and the vague pronouncements at his news conference earlier this week, here's Petrino flat-out lying:
"Hey coach, you said you were alone on the bike, right?" the reporter asked.
"Yeah," Petrino said before continuing to walk away.
Case closed.
Who Is Taver Johnson?
SBNation.com takes a look at the man who will be taking over the Hogs for the time being. Seeing as how Johnson has never even been a coordinator for an AQ team, it seems somewhat unlikely that he would be the permanent interim, if you will, should Arkansas decide to go in another direction.
SI profiles Knile Davis
That was gone fairly quickly. (HT: Arkansas Expats in hilarious fashion)
OTHER NEWS
LSU 7, Florida 6
Usually we'd wait to wrap up the Thursday night game with the rest of the scores, but this is almost too big a series to pass up , and it ended in a fairly unusual fashion: An epic base-running blunder on a lay that should have given Florida a chance to win in extra innings. The top-ranked Gators have now lost four of their last five games.
He's at least going to miss a cupcake or two
This is somewhat encouraging, even though it's an open question whether A.C. Leonard should ever play a football game again.
"There’s going to be a suspension in the fall, and he’s going to determine how long it’s going to be by how he acts from here to August," Muschamp said in a segment on 740 The Game in Orlando today.
You know, if he drags any other women across his apartment, he might actually miss two games instead of just one.
Jawara White's career is done
Neck injuries cut the Auburn player's time in football short.
Justin Hamilton headed to the NBA Draft
The LSU center averaged 12.9 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.4 blocks a game.
The network that destroyed the Moutain West is no more
One of the most underrated aspects of the Mountain West falling apart over the last couple of years was the bungled decision to dump ESPN and midweek games for the Mtn., a regional cable channel that never got off the ground.
The problem with the Mtn. was that it only ended up in about 13 million homes, meaning the games that were housed there were out of mind for millions of people and more than a few of those who vote in the writers' and coaches' polls. That made it harder for teams like Utah, BYU and TCU to get the attention they felt they deserved -- which of course lead all three of those schools to look for other options.
The bad news is that the lesson out of the MWC's disaster is that it now looks almost impossible for a conference to survive without having a contract with ESPN, which just increases that network's power in its negotiations with conferences. Because if the Mountain West had gone to the same blended model that has served the Big Ten well so far, the best mid-major conference in America might not have dissolved.