My Sunday Feeling

Bobby Petrino is a fortunate man.  I don't know how a person could burn a bridge any better than he did when he left Louisville for the Atlanta Falcons in 2005. This was after signing a 10 year extension with the Cardinals.  In retrospect, that's not burning a bridge. Petrino blew it up while it was covered with rush hour traffic that included a school bus from an orphanage.

And while we are at it, let us remember that he was fired at Arkansas, not for having an affair, not exactly, but for having an affair with his hand-picked subordinate there in the football office and then lying to his AD after getting in a motorcycle wreck with said subordinate who was suspiciously young and blond. That's what got him fired.  

And he left in his wake a shell of a football program at Arkansas that has been nothing short of awful the last two years.  

So yeah.  Maybe you might think Bobby would be the last person on Earth, well other than John L. or Lane Kiffen, that Tom Jurich, the AD at Louisville would hire to fill the vacancy left when Charlie Strong left to occupy the Darryl Royal-Exxon Endowed Chair of Football at Texas.  And if you thought that, well, you would be wrong.

Jurich, who pretty much referred to Bobby as everything but a child of God when the Atlanta media contacted him after Petrino had dumped the Falcons for Arkansas, allowed as how he is a "changed person."  Yet and still, the contract between UL and  the prodigal (and supposedly former) rageaholic has a 10 million dollar buyout clause in the event he comes down again with itchy feet disease.  Just in case.

The sportswriters that have written about this have been pretty much united in their sanctimony.  One even went so far as to accusing Jurich of having no shame.

Well, of course he doesn't.  Bidness is bidness.  The athletic department is not in the business of being morally consistent or providing a life lesson to the students that poor behavior, lying and having the loyalty of a rabid dog does not pay.  Leave that shit to the pointy heads in the Philosophy department. 

This is all about money.  Louisville was 12-1 last year and they got a lot of guys coming back.  They are going into the ACC which is at least marginally tougher then the American Athletic Conference.  Hell, Florida State won the BCS title and Duke scared the bejesus out of A&M in their bowl game.  No more Memphises or UConns to slap around.  No time for looking back for the good folks at Papa John's Louisville Stadium.

Bidness is bidness.  Bobby Petrino returns to Louisville and Lane Kiffen gets hired as the OC at Alabama.  It's just about the Benjamins so long as the actual players don't get a cut of the swag.  Because that would be wrong.

One more thing.  Maybe Bobby is a "changed individual." But just in case, I hope Jurich inserted a "no motorcycles" clause in the contract and restricts Bobby's authority to make personnel decisions to the coaching staff.

Just in case.