FAYETTEVILLE - It had to be an April Fool’s joke.
Last April 1, late on a Sunday evening, chatter kicked up in Arkansas football circles that Coach Bobby Petrino had been involved in a motorcycle accident.
Confirmation came the following morning, one year ago today, the day before the Razorbacks were scheduled to resume spring football practices, and it was no joke. Petrino had wrecked his custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle on the side of Arkansas 16 southeast of Fayetteville in rural Madison County and there were pictures to prove it.
The salacious incident, in which Petrino’s affair with a newly hired young staff member was revealed and his lying to Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long and the citizens of Arkansas was exposed, ran for days on a national level.
Long had little choice but to fire Petrino, whose flair for X’s and O’s, play-calling and program-building was well know, but whose ability to build meaningful relationships off the field was in question.
The April Fool’s Day motorcycle mishap and its aftermath impacted the lives of the central players in the drama - Petrino, his wife Becky and their family, and the 25-year old football staffer Jessica Dorrell and her fiance Josh Morgan - and shook up the Razorbacks football program that he had resuscitated and made relevant again after the fractious end of the Houston Nutt era in 2007.
It extended to the Arkansas State Police, whose relationship to the university based on providing a security detail for the football program, came under examination. Capt. Lance King, who served as Petrino’s security for football games and also escorted the bloodied and injured Petrino to the hospital after his wreck, was found in violation of state law for accepting more than $100 in gifts, including Arkansas game tickets, by the state Ethics Commission and was given a public letter of caution.
Petrino’s wreck and public downfall was selected as the sports story of 2012 by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is now etched in college football history.
Petrino made no more public appearances in Arkansas after a news conference two days after his accident. When an Arkansas State Police report came out identifying Dorrell’s presence in the wreck and Petrino’s admitted “inappropriate relationship” with her, he issued a statement.
The statement read, in part: “The simplest response I have is: I’m sorry. These two words seem very inadequate. But that is my heart. All I have been able to think about is the number of people I’ve let down by making selfish decisions. I’ve taken a lot of criticism in the past. Some deserved, some not deserved. This time, I have no one to blame but myself.”
The Arkansas football program, which suffered through a dismal losing season in the wake of the Petrino scandal, is now under the leadership of Bret Bielema and seemingly in the midst of a rebuilding cycle.
TOUGH CALL
Because Petrino’s motorcycle accident occurred during spring practice, Long was put into a difficult position. If he chose to hire a coach outside the current scope of the program, he risked jeopardizing the cohesiveness of the 2012 team, which would be ranked No. 10 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll.
If he elevated one of the 2012 staff’s assistant coaches, like offensive coordinator Paul Petrino, defensive coordinator Paul Haynes or running backs coach Tim Horton, staff dissension was possible.
Long eventually settled on John L. Smith, a longtime Petrino mentor and associate who had spent the previous three seasons on the Arkansas staff but had left in December 2011 to take the reins at his alma mater, Weber State.
“I thought it was the right fit. I thought it was the right way to keep this staff together, keep the student-athletes, keep the system together,” Long told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in December. “It goes to show you that it is a complicated mix to have a successful football team.”
Long declined an interview request for this story. A university spokesman said the athletic department had “moved on” from the incident.
10 DAYS IN APRIL
Petrino’s shocking appearance in a neck brace with numerous abrasions on his face at a news conference two days after his accident temporarily told the story of a Montana-tough coach unwilling to miss even a single spring practice.
But his mention at the news conference of “a lady who was there” who flagged down a passing car, added further speculation to the growing rumor that the 51-year-old Petrino had been accompanied by a young blonde passenger who was not his wife.
Two days later, with the release of an Arkansas State Police report on the accident, the presence of Dorrell, a former Razorbacks volleyball player who had just been hired as the football program’s student-athlete development coordinator, on Petrino’s motorcycle was verified. Five days after that, Long made the decision that Petrino’s actions forced him to take: He fired the coach who had put Arkansas football back in the national spotlight with 21 victories in two seasons and the Razorbacks’ first Bowl Championship Series berth.
Thus the highly anticipated 2012 Arkansas football season, which was impacted by one damaging blow after another, began with a sensational, self-inflicted sucker punch by its own architect.
The Razorbacks lost a school-record eight games, and in the aftermath of the disastrous season, the interim term of Smith was summarily dismantled.
Petrino was fired with cause, meaning he flushed away more than $18 million in salary and benefits over the following six years. And he laid low for four months before giving an interview to ESPN in his home base of Helana, Mont., in August.
THE AFTERMATH
Bobby and Becky Petrino are still together. He was hired as the head coach at Western Kentucky on Dec. 10,and the Hilltoppers program was recently accepted into the reconfigured Conference USA, Petrino’s former stomping grounds during his head coaching stint at Louisville (2003-2006).
Dorrell and her fiance Morgan are also reportedly still together. Morgan moved to Columbia, S.C., last August and took the position as director of aquatic strength for South Carolina’s swimming and diving team.
Dorrell also moved to South Carolina and at last report was serving as a part-time fundraiser for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators.
Dorrell had been a fundraiser with the Razorback Foundation before Petrino helped fast-track her hiring for the Arkansas football program. A source told FITSnews.com last November that Dorrell “really is a solid fundraiser” when it reported on her new job.
Smith, whose personal finances became a negative sidelight throughout the 2012 season, declared personal bankruptcy in September while facing as much as $40 million in debt. He was hired as head coach at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., effective March 1.
Long, who conducted two head coaching searches for football in the span of nine months, no easy task at any level, was given a $50,000 bonus at the end of the year at the recommendation of UA Chancellor Dave Gearhart for “your outstanding performance and the additional duties you are performing this year.” Long also received an extension and a pay raise in November, retroactive to July 1, 2012, that put him in the stratosphere of athletic directors’ salaries.
Long is now earning $500,000 from the university, $250,000 from the Razorback Foundation and will receive an incentive bonus of $150,000 at the end of each of the next three years if he’s still serving as athletic director, making his annual pay $900,000.
Long also has an achievement-incentive plan in his contract for items such as graduation rates, success in academic progress rates for the department, balancing the department’s budget and his good citizenship that make earning an extra $250,000 per year a routine occurrence.
A recent report in USA Today showed Long’s annual pay as ranking No. 11 in the country among athletic directors. But Long’s maximum bonus - listed by the newspaper at $650,000 - ranks third in the country by their data, allowing his earnings to rival that of Florida’s Jeremy Foley (total pay: $1,233,250; maximum bonus $50,000) for highest in the SEC.
The 2012 Arkansas coaching staff has scattered throughout the country, with only one holdover, Taver Johnson, remaining in an on the-field capacity. Former Arkansas cornerbacks coach Bobby Allen was hired by Bielema as director of high school relations and is recovering from knee surgery he underwent six weeks ago.
Sports, Pages 17 on 04/02/2013