It depends on whom you talk to.
There’s the “smart coach, asshole personally” school of thought, expressed nicely by one of his former Falcons players.
“That’s karma,” the former N.F.L. safety Lawyer Milloy, who played for Petrino in Atlanta, said Friday. Milloy added, “Just because he knows X’s and O’s doesn’t mean he’s a nice person.”
Then there’s the “smart coach, skip the personality” attitude.
Despite his personal feelings, Dover said he knew of people who swore by Petrino once they got to know him. “If he walked to the door to recruit one of my kids, I’d open it,” Dover said, “because he’s a great football coach.”
Er, wait. “Despite his personal feelings”?
Louis Dover, who coaches at Seneca High School in Louisville, perhaps best summed up the feelings many people in football have about Petrino. “As a coach, he’s a genius, he’s one of the elite minds,” Dover said. “Personally, well, he’s a good coach.”
Dover said some of his distaste for Petrino stemmed from his treatment of D. J. Kamer, who played for Petrino at Louisville and for Dover at a previous employer, Waggener High School. Kamer told Dover that Petrino tried to persuade him not to attend a friend’s funeral in which he was a pallbearer.
“He was very disappointed D. J. was going to miss practice to go,” Dover said. “He didn’t say, ‘You can’t go.’ He said, ‘I guess you don’t want to play football here.’ ”
Yecch.
Assuming Petrino survives in one form or fashion (I still think it’s likely he will), I only hope at the presser they skip trying to sell us on lesson learning or being a changed man by the circumstances. Because this is a guy who’s never going to be any different, regardless of how you view the contents of the glass.
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UPDATE: Not that the Arkansas fan base stands ready to buy in to a tale of redemption, or anything…
Get The Picture 
Anywhere else he’d be gone already. Certainly he’d be gone from UGA.
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I’d like to see the S&C Coordinator/Fiancé standing next to Petrino at the presser. Except now, instead of the neck brace, his face is black and blue, talking about learning life lessons…
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The guy actually is a swim and dive coach. So he’s not on Petrino’s staff but it doesn’t make it any less slimey. It’s funny how he’s an asshole everywhere but Arky. I guess they aren’t worried about anyone laughing at them if he’ll keep them in the top ten.
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He will be retained and should the Hogs go on a 6-0 tear you should prepare for the redemptive story of Bobby Petrino as told by tear-jerking accounts from Vern, WWL vignettes and the like. Call me a cynical bastard, but I will assume this outcome until proven otherwise.
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Considering the fact that we saw something akin to this play out involving all of the Tiger Woods mess, you are not a cynical bastard but a historian.
I can only hope things go for Petrino (should he be retained) like they have gone with Tiger…very little success and a lot of falling-flat-on-your-face.
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Tiger? Are you speaking of the guy whose wife rescued him from an SUV crash two doors over by using a 4 iron? Most incredible bravery I’ve heard of when her husband can’t drive (a car) for shit and she follows him with a tool to rescue him before his pants catch on fire. A rescue that left him stunned on the neighbor’s front walk such that he had to lie there, unmoving until the ambulance got there. They just don’t make air bags like they used to.
But they still make a good 4 iron, at least when it is placed in the proper hands. It’s a miracle Tiger wasn’t hit by the 4 iron in his wife’s frantic and valiant effort to rescue him.
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There are segments of the UGA fan base that seem to be willing to sell their soul to win any kind of football championship and will continue to bash Richt when he just have to follow UGA rules on discipline lately.
They likely will be the same group who will be willing to get Petrino if he will bring a NC championship trophy 100% guaranteed to the football team.
I will not. Will anybody say, they will?
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Petrino is a self absorbed asshole who only cares for one person in the world and that person is Bobby Petrino. As long as you’re ok with that being your coach like Arkansas is then so be it.
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I don’t see how Petrino keeps his job in this. He lied to his boss’s face; how does the AD not fire him and retain any credibility?
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If a professor, male or female, had an affair would they be fired? Or suspended? Do most employers do this? Granted he exercised very poor judgment and hurt his marraige and family. Let’s not get wrapped up into the man’s personality. Do not think he was hired on that based on his past history. But then again, maybe they are all saints at Arkansas.
The issue for Georgia is their men’s programs. Trust me they have some serious issues right now. The Diamond Dawgs have gone nowhere under Perno. Why does the AD put up with his performance as a coach. The baseball team has virtually been destroyed the past 3 seasons. Going nowhere but down.
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I am not arguing he should be fired, but the comparison to a prof is a false argument — to the extent you are making one. Professorships and coaching only share a similarity in that each are associated with a University. Otherwise, the criteria for hiring and firing these positions (where firing is even possible with tenure) have little to do with each other.
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And therein lies the rub. He can’t and Petrino has put him in a bad place. That’s why I differ with Blutarsky and say he gets canned (as soon as he has a job and can facesave the AD by leaving on his own). If it isn’t soon, he’s canned after Spring Game and before Fall Practice.
All in all, though, Petrino makes a grand picture with that neck brace and a face that looks like he just exited a Falcons biker bar in Atlanta. It’s difficult to keep a bike on the road when a female passenger is twiddling your gear knob. And this is the visage of the most famous person known nationally as the U of Ark coach of your young and impressionable men ? Wonder what his face looked like just before he lost control?
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Reply to Irishdawg above.
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His biggest problem is that the U of Arky has got to CYA in future happenings. The fact that he hired a subordinate that he was having an “inappropriate relationship” with flies in the face of the University’s rules not the athletic department this thing has gotten above the AD’s pay grade. If they do not fire him then the next professor that wants to get a little student on the side will have the Petrino defense, whatever the heck that could be.
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Agreed. Not beven the Razorbacks are going to be open to that media meilei (new word for the Lexicon).
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“meilei”(maylay) is the new candidate, not “beven”. Everyone knows “beven” means “defeated beaver”. Ex: “His girlfriend had bevened him so much that he thought he was a winner, just from her wimpering sounds”. Little did he know that fake bevens rule the world!
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