Arkansas Does Best to Keep Focus Without Petrino at LinesMaker

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. With Bobby Petrino not on the field and his con­duct under review by his boss, Arkansas is doing its best to con­cen­trate on spring practice.

The Razor­backs returned to the field Fri­day, less than 24 hours after the coach was placed on paid leave fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion he had lied about being alone dur­ing a motor­cy­cle acci­dent last weekend.

This may have appeared to be a nor­mal prac­tice at Razor­back Sta­dium. Of course, it was any­thing but with­out the coach who has turned Arkansas into a national con­tender over the past four sea­sons. Sev­eral hun­dred fans watched from the stands, their cheers notice­ably reserved.

Arkansas ath­letic direc­tor Jeff long placed Petrino on leave Thurs­day night. The move came after Petrino told Long he had ini­tially lied about the pres­ence of 25-year-old foot­ball depart­ment employee Jes­sica Dor­rell dur­ing the acci­dent. The 51-year-old coach, mar­ried with four chil­dren, also admit­ted to a “pre­vi­ous inap­pro­pri­ate relationship.”

Long said Sat­ur­day he expected to review Petrino’s con­duct on Easter Sun­day. He didn’t hide his dis­ap­point­ment in Petrino when announc­ing the paid leave Thurs­day. Now he must decide whether to fire the coach or keep him with some other punishment.

Act­ing head coach Taver John­son, who was put in charge of the pro­gram by Long, with­held imme­di­ate judgment.

“Dis­ap­point­ment, I’m not sure,” John­son said. “Again, you don’t know all the facts, you don’t have all the infor­ma­tion. So, until you have all those things, you can’t really pass judgment.

“The play­ers, I think they’re along the same lines. Nobody really knows, so you can’t really answer a ton of ques­tions yet until you find out.”

Arkansas entered the spring with high expec­ta­tions after going 11–2, fin­ish­ing with a No. 5 rank­ing and beat­ing Kansas State in the Cot­ton Bowl. The team’s only losses last sea­son were to the top two teams in the coun­try, Alabama and LSU. Com­ing back are senior quar­ter­back Tyler Wil­son and junior run­ning back Knile Davis.

Wil­son and Davis con­sid­ered enter­ing the NFL draft before decid­ing to return. They did so with their sights set on both South­east­ern Con­fer­ence and national championships.

Play­ers weren’t allowed to talk with the media fol­low­ing Friday’s prac­tice. John­son, hired from Ohio State in Jan­u­ary, said before prac­tice that the team held a meet­ing and it was “busi­ness as usual.”

“Through­out spring, our main focus has been the foot­ball team,” he said. “So noth­ing has changed in that regard.”

John­son went through sim­i­lar tur­moil last sea­son with the Buck­eyes, who were deal­ing with a memorabilia-for-cash scan­dal that even­tu­ally cost coach Jim Tres­sel his job. He was retained on Ohio State coach Urban Meyer’s new staff before leav­ing for the Razor­backs – join­ing for­mer Buck­eyes assis­tant coach Paul Haynes.

John­son said he was pre­pared to step into for Petrino. The line­back­ers coach, how­ever, couldn’t have expected to be put in such a dif­fi­cult posi­tion when he was hired less than three months ago.

“I really haven’t had much con­tact with coach,” John­son said. “I know he’s hurt­ing inter­nally, so I really haven’t had much con­ver­sa­tion there. How­ever, our con­ver­sa­tions lead­ing up to this day, we all under­stand the expec­ta­tions and the goals that we’ve set out for our team. That will def­i­nitely exude through all of us.”

John­son said he had a “human reac­tion, like every­one else” when told of Petrino’s admissions.

“It’s some­thing that hap­pened, and all of us are prob­a­bly try­ing to ask ques­tions and things like that, but I think the human ele­ment came out,” John­son said. “Right now, we don’t have any facts, we can’t place any blame. We have to let our admin­is­tra­tion, who’s done a great job gath­er­ing all of the infor­ma­tion, take care of that.”

John­son wouldn’t go as far as to say he was dis­ap­pointed in Petrino. Nor would he say if he felt his own newly acquired job was in jeopardy.

“I don’t know if that’s a ques­tion I can answer right away,” John­son said. “I don’t know if you ever come to work and you feel that way. The only thing you’re con­cerned about is com­ing here and doing the best job you can for the uni­ver­sity and our play­ers, more importantly.”

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