FAYETTEVILLE — Certainly the University of Arkansas review process begins with the athletic director reviewing its head football coach caught in a lie.
It should not end there.
The athletic director, and the UA chancellor and the board of trustees should thoroughly review themselves and each other as well.
Their part in allowing their public university’s football program to operate so secretly demands a broader-based review before the next mound of dirt is turned for the lavish football office they are building for the coach whose private actions put the university in a public plight.
Razorbacks Coach Bobby Petrino was injured Sunday in a motorcycle accident that he told Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long involved only himself. He then told media the same thing Tuesday, after the UA issued a news release attributed to Petrino’s family Monday that reiterated Petrino was riding alone. Then, on Thursday, Petrino admitted he had a passenger on that Sunday ride in Madison County.
Eighteen minutes before the Arkansas State Police released its report of the accident Thursday, Petrino, 51, phoned Long, and admitted he had been accompanied by Jessica Dorrell. Dorrell, 25, was a former Arkansas volleyball player and had been promoted March 28 from a fundraiser in the Razorback Foundation to Petrino’s staff as the student-athlete development coordinator for football.
Late Thursday night, as Long announced Petrino had been put on paid leave away from the team and that his UA status was under review, the UA released a statement from Petrino that included: “I certainly had a concern about Jessica Dorrell’s name being revealed. My concern was to protect my family and a previous inappropriate relationship from becoming public.”
Petrino and his wife, Becky, are longtime married with four children and two grandchildren. Dorrell has been engaged to the director of operations of the UA’s swimming and diving team.
Their personal lives and how they resolve them are their own business, but the coach of a public university caught in a public lie about his employee becomes public business.
It’s public business that ought to have the UA immediately reviewing the unprecedented secrecy it has allowed Petrino’s program inside the Broyles Center, which seems destined for increasing secrecy moving to a football-only domain.
Whether or not Petrino survives the review, whoever coaches should coach in a setting far less secretive than has been allowed.
Of course, “inappropriate relationships” are nearly always attempted to be kept secret, but the secrecy the UA allowed its coach perhaps fed into Petrino thinking he could keep this secret even in the wake of an impending police report.
Constant secrecy begets a climate inevitably brewing an ill wind.
With secrecy comes consequences, and red flags have waved nationally since a longtime former Penn State assistant football coach was charged with sexually abusing young boys in Penn State’s facilities long after school officials failed to act on a report of suspicious conduct.
Yet, even after that, it seems the trend increases for public universities allowing their big-time coaches to operate increasingly unchecked. It’s a trend fraught with peril.
For the less transparency with which public institutions operate, usually the more damning when some secrecy cloaked comes to light.
Ask Penn State.
Now ask Arkansas, too.
Sports, Pages 21 on 04/07/2012