Bobby Petrino has made a career of burning bridges and somehow swimming to shore in time to watch the world crumble behind him, but karma is finally catching up.
Thursday night, Louisville punted away chance after chance after chance en route to a painful loss to Clemson. The Cardinals had hoped to start their ACC campaign on the right note after losing two non-conference games out of the gate. However, they couldn’t solve the Tigers… in large part because they couldn’t solve their own problems. The end of the game was emblematic of this team’s futility: botched snap, sack, a duck of an interception.
This season has been a nightmare for Louisville. The Cardinals lost to Auburn, in a game where they both outgained the Tigers and won the turnover battle, on a neutral field. The Cardinals followed that up with a razor-thin loss to Houston where they led three times, including twice in the fourth quarter. The September to misremember continued on Thursday with a winnable game that was chucked away by terrible game management and play selection.
This was the first time a Petrino-coached team, at the college level, has lost its first three games, and it’s only the second time any Petrino-coached college team has lost three in a row.
It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving coach.
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The bridge burner, Bobby Petrino, has been a callus on college football for over a decade. Objectively, he is one of the best pure coaches the game has known this century, with a 92-37 record over 11 seasons as a head coach. However, that doesn’t absolve him from the litany of destructive and selfish acts, both on and off the field, which have left multiple programs in terrible places. To truly understand how karmic this month is for Petrino, you must look at his last dozen years in football.
During his first stint in Louisville, he lied about interviewing for the head job at Auburn despite the job not being available at the time. After the 2004 season, he signed a richer, reconfigured deal to stay at Louisville, saying “I want to make it clear that I’m not interested in any other coaching jobs and am happy at the University of Louisville.” Five days later he interviewed at LSU.
In the summer of 2006, after sniffing around at the Oakland Raiders’ job, he signed a 10-year deal with a maximum value of $25 million to stay at Louisville. “I wanted to make sure everyone understood, I know I’ve said it, that this is where I want to be, where my family wants to be. But I want everyone to really believe it.” Petrino himself didn’t believe it when, after a 12-1 season capped by an Orange Bowl win, he took the head job with the Atlanta Falcons.
On December 10, 2007, just 336 days after taking the Falcons’ job, the bridge burner, Bobby Petrino, quit his post and told players via a paragraph-long, laminated note left in their lockers. He was introduced as the head coach at Arkansas that very same day.
Four year later, after a 34-17 record, Petrino was fired at Arkansas after bringing unto himself the ultimate end-of-job tandem: adulterous relationship/motorcycle accident with an athletics’ department aide he unfairly advanced in an employment process.
After the ignominious exit at Arkansas, Petrino was out of coaching for a season before Western Kentucky came calling, and he took the job. His contract was for $800,000 a year with a $1.2 million buyout if he left early for any reason. This was the first thing he said at his introductory press conference: “Thank you. I’m extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to become Western Kentucky’s head football coach. My wife Becky and I consider this coming home. We have children that are here in the state. We’ve been here and it’s great to be able to come back to the state that we love. This was a family decision, and we looked at it, sat down, and talked. We felt like this was something that was best for our family. A place where we wanted to be.”
He left and returned to Louisville after one season, which brings us back to Thursday night and the inept performance his Cardinals put on the field in primetime. This is the season the bridge burner, Bobby Petrino, has deserved for years. All the misdeeds have been papered over with arbitrary wins in an arbitrary game. Louisville should have known better.
There is nothing to hide behind now. Up next is a home date against Samford, followed by road games at North Carolina State and Florida State. It’s very realistic that Louisville will be 1-5 heading into its homecoming game against Boston College. Eventually you burn a bridge and fall into the waters below, and you’re alone miles from shore. Welcome to that reality, Bobby. You’ve brought it on yourself.
