Making the Case to Keep Bobby Petrino at LinesMaker

Making the Case to Keep Bobby Petrino

Tomor­row – or, if you’re read­ing this Sun­day morn­ing, today – marks one week since Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino was in a motor­cy­cle acci­dent with UA foot­ball employee Jes­sica Dor­rell. And for the past few days since a police report exposed what points to being an affair with Dor­rell, there have been numer­ous calls for Petrino’s resignation/firing.Some think Petrino didn’t uphold a moral or eth­i­cal stan­dard that’s expected of him, but the con­sen­sus is that the more sig­nif­i­cant crime is the cover up that spilled over to the work­place. Petrino lied to his boss, ath­letic direc­tor Jeff Long (pic­tured), by with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion about Dor­rell and put UA in an HR bind by pos­si­bly com­mit­ting a quid pro quo with Dor­rell, who was hired to her cur­rent job on March 28.

That sounds like beyond rea­son­able grounds for ter­mi­na­tion to me, but admit­tedly, I’m sit­ting behind a com­puter screen in Texas. If the deci­sion to fire Petrino was that easy, it would have been done by now.

Long said Thurs­day night when he placed Petrino on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave that he would go through a delib­er­ate review of the sit­u­a­tion before mak­ing a con­clu­sion. On Sat­ur­day, a UA spokesper­son released a state­ment from Long, which states the following:

“The [Petrino] review is ongo­ing and will con­tinue through­out the weekend.”

So, what’s Long think­ing about? Take a look at an arti­cle by Chris Bahn of ArkansasSports360 (Here’s a link). It might be the most spot-on glance to date into what Long is con­sid­er­ing as he delib­er­ates whether he should can Petrino or not.

This goes beyond the $ 3.56 mil­lion Arkansas has invested in Petrino annu­ally until 2017. That’s pocket change com­pared to the other finan­cials that have to be considered.

…

Even with­out actu­ally win­ning a BCS bowl, the SEC or the SEC West, Petrino has man­aged to increase fan buy-in, some­thing that has helped the Razor­back foot­ball pro­gram see a 59-percent increase in value since 2009. Forbes esti­mated last year that Arkansas foot­ball is val­ued at $ 89 million.

Don’t for­get the sub­stan­tial invest­ment Long and Arkansas have in Petrino’s foot­ball oper­a­tions cen­ter. Shortly after being hired Petrino began ask­ing for a new facil­ity, one that began with a $ 20 mil­lion esti­mate, but has now grown to $ 40 mil­lion (and climbing).

Con­struc­tion has begun on the 80,000-square foot facil­ity. Fundrais­ing is ongoing.

Keep this in mind: just because money is pledged for the facil­ity doesn’t mean the UA has the cash in hand. Bonds were pur­chased so con­struc­tion could begin, but the debt for the build­ing isn’t totally covered.

Petrino’s value to the pro­gram is more than just 8.5 wins per year in the tough­est divi­sion in col­lege foot­ball. It’s the wealth of every­thing that goes along with those wins.

But does that give Petrino free­dom to do what he wants?

As a boss, it has to be a dis­heart­en­ing feel­ing to know your employee lied/withheld impor­tant infor­ma­tion from you – yes, it was impor­tant; see Arkansas’ release on Mon­day – and was per­fectly con­tent doing so. It has to be equally frus­trat­ing to think Petrino would hire some­one he was pos­si­bly fool­ing around with.

That’s a lot of dis­hon­esty at one time. If Long could get rid of Petrino and not lose a beat in fundrais­ing efforts while being simul­ta­ne­ously guar­an­teed a capa­ble replace­ment to lead the Hogs into the future, there’s no doubt he would.

It’s not that simple.

Long is fac­ing a busi­ness deci­sion, and while Petrino’s actions have more than mer­ited a fir­ing, doing so with­out con­sid­er­ing the cost of the alter­na­tive would be an emo­tional deci­sion. Last time some­one at UA made an emo­tional deci­sion, he and his 25-year-old sub­or­di­nate got in a motor­cy­cle accident.

So what Long has to weigh is the worth of suc­cess vs. the worth of trust. I don’t know the answer, but I sure as hell know I do not envy Long for being forced to fig­ure it out.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more col­lege foot­ball news see: Mak­ing the case to keep Bobby Petrino.

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