Men are pigs; some are also Hogs

So the big news tonight, to anyone paying even the slightest attention to SEC college football, is that Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino is out of a job, nine days after he had a motorcycle wreck which gradually snowballed into a home-wrecking train wreck. The Reader’s Digest Condensed Books version of the story goes like this: Petrino was injured in a motorcycle accident on April 1st, seriously enough to need a neck brace; he told the news media and university officials that he was alone on the bike. On April 5th, the Arkansas State Police issued their report which revealed that Petrino wasn’t alone, but had a passenger, a 25-year-old woman who had just landed a job in the Arkansas football program a few days earlier; within hours Petrino admitted that he’d had an “inappropriate relationship” with her, though he expressed this in terms of it being a “former” relationship (because, you know, that makes it all better). Today, the U of A fired Petrino with cause after discovering that not only had Petrino selected this woman – with whom he’d had a prior relationship – for the job that she landed, but had also given her a gift of $20,000.

Man, I want to be his close personal friend too. Somehow I doubt I have the same qualifications.

The media and public speculation firestorm that has built up in the space of ten days has been a circus, to say the least. What has astounded me is the number of people who have demonstrated a willingness to overlook just about any shady dealings on Petrino’s part because he’s been returning the Arkansas football program to the national spotlight. U of A athletic director Jeff Long made it clear in his Tuesday night press conference that Petrino’s actions forced his hand – the University had to do something.

And indeed it did. Coach or not, Petrino is part of an academic institution, and served as an instructor, role model and father figure to young men. That gets so easily overlooked in favor of a winning record, but it shouldn’t be. The recruiting machinery of college football, and its symbiotic/parasitic relationship with pro football, entices hot prospects with the promise of a career, money, sholarships (in college), endorsements (in pro football), basically… stuff. It’s a cutthroat meat market for future gridiron gladiators, one in which schools are routinely investigated, if not censured, for how they conduct themselves. There are rigid rules about how prospects can be courted; no one’s under any illusion that the rules are rigidly adhered to by everyone.

You’re talking about young men, often away from home and the influence of family (or away from a home that didn’t exert enough influence in their lives to set a moral compass), who have so many carrots dangled in front of them that they can’t see the armed guy hunting for wabbits on the other side. And then their coach, the man they look up to, is going to send the message that once you ascend to his level in the world of football, you can skirt the basic rules and contracts that hold society together and get away with it because, hey, you’re a winning player/coach.

No.

As a father of a boy who will grow up to be a young man who will someday have to exercise his best judgement outside of my sphere of influence, I’m just saying: no.

I’m terribly impressed that not only did Jeff Long also say “no” to this, but did it in only ten days, rather than dragging things out well into, oh, say, next bowl season. No dicking around, no “well, we’ll have the lawyers look into it as soon as we can” evasion, it was a done deal in ten days. Talk about knocking over a house of cards.

To me, Petrino’s dismissal did not happen on the same kind of token-Christianity-when-it’s-convenient “public shaming” lynch mob basis as often befalls public figures. It happened because he violated the terms of his contract by withholding information, at every step of the process, until it was going to come out anyway. We have no idea if he expected to get away with it and expected the firestorm to go away at any point if he happened to strategically throw himself on his sword at the right time; nobody’s privy to that except Bobby Petrino. What we are privy to is that he was misusing a position of trust in which he has considerable influence over young people at a time in their lives when their character is still being shaped by outside forces. Being one of those outside forces is one of those positions that people consider a sacred trust.

Winning streaks will come and go, sometimes within the career of a single coach. A coach’s football record is usually only as good as his last season. The messages we’re sending to our kids last a lot longer, and they’re more important than any team’s record. I’m very impressed that Jeff Long felt the same way, and acted swiftly.

His action will help the school more than it will hurt it. There are things in the world more important than football.