The disingenuous drifter is on the move again. He is moving to his third job in a month, a whirlwind even by his standards. Left behind are the usual empty words, false promises and disillusionment.
Bobby Petrino, a man who never has anything but bad endings, at least has another new beginning. He will reportedly be the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M, hired to bail out head coach Jimbo Fisher from the massive mess of his own making. Petrino will probably do well in the role—calling plays is his thing.
Loyalty is not his thing. This is example No. 432 of that.
Petrino’s latest job change was reported Thursday. Twenty days before that, he was announced as the new offensive coordinator at UNLV. Here is what he said in a school release at the time about joining new coach Barry Odom’s staff: “Barry Odom is a talented coach who has always been highly respected and I really look forward to working with him at UNLV. I’m excited to be part of the new direction of the Rebels and compete for championships.”
Ah, well, so much for that excitement. So much for those championships. So much for the recruits he helped sway to follow him from his other old job to Vegas.
While the head coach at Missouri State way back in early December, Petrino had recruited a Texas junior-college tight end named Christian Earls and a Florida high-school quarterback named Blake Boda. When he switched jobs to UNLV, those two players wound up following. Earls signed a letter of intent, while Boda made a verbal commitment.
Michael Woods/AP
Whoops.
Both players told Sports Illustrated on Thursday that they don’t bear Petrino any ill will for the bait-and-switch.
“I decided on UNLV in a collective decision,” Earls says. “There are many factors that played into why I decided on UNLV, it wasn’t just a single coach that got me to go here. I am still very excited to go to Las Vegas to develop and battle with my new brothers.”
“I’m new to this process, too,” says Boda, a late bloomer whose stock rose appreciably during the Florida state high school playoffs. “I’m figuring it out. Nothing’s really changed. I’m still committed to UNLV. I talked to coach Odom [Wednesday] night.
“Things got a little hectic [when news broke about Petrino leaving]—he was brand new to UNLV and now he’s off to A&M. I couldn’t be more happy for him to get back to the SEC level. I understand it’s a business, and he’s got to do what’s best for his family.”
And Texas A&M has to do what’s best for winning football games, no matter what kind of baggage comes to College Station. Fisher was given a sultan’s salary to take the Aggies to national championships, and let’s just say that isn’t working out too well. He has too big a buyout to be fired, so the school is trying to fix everything around him by hiring a rogue’s gallery of assistants.
This past season, D.J. Durkin was hired as defensive coordinator. You may recall, he was the Maryland coach who was fired in the wake of player Jordan McNair’s death during a conditioning workout in 2018. An investigation at Maryland ultimately determined that a “toxic culture” did not exist in Durkin’s program, but he was dismissed.
Also added to the A&M staff in 2022: Steve Addazio, less than two months after being fired as coach at Colorado State. Part of what ended Addazio’s tenure there after just two seasons: an investigation that found it “likely” he had used racially insensitive language during an altercation with a janitor, and Addazio was the aggressor in the verbal confrontation. It was Addazio’s second investigation at CSU, after being accused of violating COVID-19 protocols and a separate racial insensitivity complaint.
So, really, what better place for Bobby Petrino to land after a three-week stint at another job?
Really, it’s almost reassuring to know Bobby’s still Bobby at his core. This latest three-job shuffle is just another set of bullet points on the disingenuous drifter’s list:
- JetGate in 2003 is what first established Petrino’s scammer credentials. Near the end of his first season as head coach at Louisville, Petrino surreptitiously met with Auburn administrators to discuss taking over as coach of the Tigers—even though Tommy Tuberville was still the coach. When that plan was exposed, several people lost their jobs, but not Tuberville. Or Petrino, who penitently promised not to go behind athletic director Tom Jurich’s back in search of other gigs.
- A year later, Petrino surreptitiously talked to LSU about its open job, and news of that broke just days before 10-1 Louisville played undefeated Boise State in a Top 10 matchup in the Liberty Bowl. Petrino made an appearance at a Louisville fan event the night before the game and received a frosty reception. The Cardinals won on New Year’s Eve and Petrino withdrew his name from LSU consideration on New Year’s Day—when it was apparent the school was going to hire Les Miles.
- Two years later, Petrino finally landed another job, with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. That lasted 13 games until he quit with a 3-10 record and left a laminated note in the lockers of the players.
- The same day he quit in Atlanta, Petrino was introduced as the new coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks. That ended in a motorcycle crash, road rash and complete humiliation when an affair with a subordinate who he hired to work in the football office was discovered.
- The road back led to Western Kentucky. Petrino jilted the Hilltoppers after one season to return to Louisville, where he reprised his old success and developed the school’s first and only Heisman Trophy winner, Lamar Jackson. But by 2018, Petrino was mailing it in. He was fired after a 2-8 start that included the Cardinals surrendering 52 or more points in six of their last seven games under Petrino.
- From there it was down a rung to Missouri State, but he was back in the game. At his introductory press conference there in January 2020, Petrino delivered this gem:
“This is the job that I want, a five-year contract,” Petrino said then. “Like I told [athletic director Kyle Moats], if you’re going to write a script, let’s write a script like this—I come here, I’d be very successful. I decide eight-to-10 years from now if I still want to coach football, with a national championship in my pocket. That’s what I want to see happen.”
So much for that script. Three years and an 18-15 record later, he was gone and headed to UNLV. And now, it’s Texas A&M.
The disingenuous drifter keeps moving on—have playbook, will travel … and will ultimately end badly.
