While covering the Oklahoma Sooners, an uzi machine gun was fired from the balcony of the athletic dormitory. A mother of a player that I knew said her younger son spent one night with his older brother at the dorm and came home never wanting to go back. He was that scared of the place. Incidents like that and players arrested for drug trafficking led to the resignation of head coach Barry Switzer.
My one season covering Georgia, I watched the Bulldogs go 6-6 in the first season under someone not named Vince Dooley since 1963. Former player Ray Goff failed to fill the shoes of the legendary coach. Some people claimed Goff was just too nice, but a couple of years later, while smack dab in the middle of the Alabama-Auburn rivalry, a then-Auburn assistant coach told me that his program hardly had time to worry about allegations at the hated cross-state school because they had a large stack of papers on what they deemed “inappropriate” recruiting tactics by Goff and Georgia.
While covering Auburn, the Eric Ramsey tapes proved to be the downfall of the Pat Dye-era. Current Troy head coach and then-Auburn assistant Larry Blakeney was penalized as his part of that pay-for-play deal.
My final year in Alabama, the Crimson Tide won its first national championship in the post-Bear Bryant era, but on that very same night in a New Orleans hotel room, defensive back Antonio Langham signed with an agent, leading to Bama having to forfeit the games he would play in the next season.
I returned to Arkansas in the summer of 1993. During my first time covering the Razorbacks, I had little doubt that the program was among the cleanest in Division I. About the only thing I witnessed in my first go-round covering Arkansas was some players receiving small amounts of “spending money” for post-game nights out on the town.
Arkansas had looked particularly clean when compared to the old Southwest Conference habits of SMU, TCU and Texas A&M. During my second stint covering the Hogs, I noticed an entirely new feel around the Broyles Complex. Life in the SEC might as well have been the difference between Beverly Hills and Cambodia. Nothing was as open as before, and the friendliness had been replaced with a much more formal business approach. That in itself is not a crime, it was just a different culture than before.
Aside from some minor infractions, Arkansas has still managed to remain cleaner than most big-time programs. Perhaps that’s why the messy tidbits that arose during the Houston Nutt era and the most recent problems following the Bobby Petrino saga have such a lasting sting that has fans on both sides of the isle yelping. The stinger was in deep and is still in many.
My reaction after a week-plus of the Petrino mess is, first of all, because of his employment it is indeed our business, and secondly, no one other than Bobby Petrino is to blame for Bobby Petrino’s situation. No TV network, no newspaper and no radio talk show put a 25-year-old employee on his Harley.
Maybe more Arkansas fans were willing to forgive Petrino because they haven’t had to forgive as much. Well, there’s that and an 11-2 season.
We’ve always heard that when fans stop griping about losses is when you should worry the most because that means they’ve grown too accustomed to them. With that in mind, let’s hope Arkansas fans gripe long and loud over coaching indiscretions.
One thing Arkansas fans on either side of the Petrino issue need to remember is that this was a personal decision, a very poor one, by a member of the Razorback family. It should not, however, reflect on a program, that remains a top-tier program when it comes to NCAA infractions, or lack thereof.