Bobby Petrino Needs Help Making Excuses

Featured, Football, Razorbacks | February 28, 2013 by Sporting Life Arkansas | 9 Comments

Disgraced former Razorback head football coach Bobby Petrino needs help with excuses as to exactly why he lied to his old boss, Jeff Long, athletic director at the University of Arkansas.

In an interview with CBSSports.com, all part of Petrino’s continuing personal-image-rehab tour, he was asked, according the story, “If he had walked into (Jeff) Long’s office after the crash and confessed the affair, would he have survived?”

In classic Bobby Petrino fashion, his answer doesn’t focus on the question, “would he have survived?” His answer doesn’t address the root of the question, “do you wish you had confessed sooner to Long of the affair”.

No, what we get is an answer that is more – it depends on what your definition of the word “is” is – than any proof or example that he is truly a man who is remorseful and rehabilitated or even nearing rehabilitation, for that matter.

Here is Petrino’s answer, as published by CBSSports.com:

“There were a lot of things going on that didn’t allow me to do that,” Petrino said. “I was in the hospital, medicated.”

That’s true. Immediately after the crash, after being transported to a parking lot drop off spot to be further transported to a hospital by an off-duty Arkansas State Police officer, to then be admitted to the hospital and administered drugs, Petrino was no position to have “walked into Long’s office [immediately] after the crash and confessed the affair…”

He could have done it earlier in the day he held a press conference and told the state he was on the motorcycle alone; or after the press conference, before heading up to the press box to coach his team in spring drills because, you know, that’s what tough guys do. They show up for work, and tough it out. They do their jobs.

He also could have walked into Long’s office and made that confession the next morning, but Bobby Petrino didn’t do that. He waited until about 20 minutes before the official police report was going to be released, letting us all, and Long, know Petrino told big fat lies: to the boss, to the press, to the fans and presumably to the wife.

But the sport in all of this isn’t poking fun at a man who lies. The sport is figuring out just what were the other things going on that didn’t allow Petrino to be honest with Long any sooner than he was.