Bobby Petrino fired as University of Louisville head coach

After dropping his seventh straight game and amassing a 2-8 season thus far in the 2018 football season, Bobby Petrino has been let go as the Louisville Cardinals head football coach. He will not coach in the final two games.

After Charlie Strong left UofL for Texas, former athletic director Tom Jurich had to find a replacement quickly as the university was headed to the ACC. That meant an assistant or a young coach would be too risky for such a big jump. He needed someone with more experience.

Enter Bobby Petrino.

Petrino had just finished up his first and only year at Western Kentucky. He landed in Bowling Green due to a scandal and subsequent firing at Arkansas. This wasn’t his first rodeo as he had plenty of baggage before that.

While at UofL there were multiple times when he met with other schools in hopes of landing a job. When he did make the leap to bigger and better things, he landed with the Atlanta Falcons and famously deserted the team.

Despite all of that and his reputation for not getting along with assistant coaches or players, Tom Jurich pulled the trigger and hired Bobby when he was persona non grata in college football.

Louisville and Jurich took a lot of heat for re-hiring Bobby Petrino, Pat Forde wrote an article that claimed Bobby was a changed man partly because he caddied for his daughter.

While Bobby had some success during his second stint as the Cardinals head coach, including coaching Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson, he never really lived up to the lofty standards he set for himself back when he was demolishing CUSA teams.

He went 119-55 the second time around, a 46% winning rate, and went 1-3 in bowl games. He defeated only one top 25 opponent during his tenure there.

And it wasn’t like losing was the only issue that Bobby faced during his “redemption tour”. His staff received a playbook from a Wake Forrest radio host and they were caught red handed.

Petrino revoked the scholarship offer of incoming freshman Matt Colburn the day before signing day. Luckily the young man landed at Wake Forrest and balled out against UofL.

And then there’s the fact that his staff is filled with family members and sycophants.

But UofL was fine with all of this. Until the losing started. The move comes as no surprise but now athletic director Vince Tyra is facing an enormous buyout put in place by his predecessor and it’s not like UofL is flush with cash at the moment.

The likely, but not certain, replacement for Petrino is native son Jeff Brohm. He’s currently at Purdue and he has a buyout all his own. Louisville fans are already pumping up the bravado with the thoughts of Brohm becoming coach. Kind of like when Petrino was hired again. Remember, they were going to take over the ACC and Bobby Ball was going to put up 70 points on e’erbody.

How’d that work out?

This is just another disaster for the cluster that is UofL athletics.