Louisville football: Time to move forward and let Bobby Petrino go

Former Louisville football head coach Bobby Petrino has been discussed Ad nauseam since his firing last season. It’s time to move on.

I get it, Bobby Petrino was a horrible human, but It is time to let Petrino era of Louisville football go for good. Stop giving it energy.

During ACC media day, Scott Satterfield continued to display why Louisville made a good hire.

Seth Dawkins and Dorian Etheridge represented the Cardinals in North Carolina where they discussed how Satterfield has altered the environment of the football team.

“He invited us to his house. In the four years that I’ve been here, I had never been to a coach’s house before,” senior wide receiver Dawkins stated.

“Yeah, that hadn’t happened since I’ve been in college,” linebacker Etheridge confirmed. “I’ve been over there are a few times already. People don’t really think that stuff like that matters, but players, we all take notice of that.”

This regime has emphasized being more of a family and creating continuity from the top down. Will this lead to many wins this year? That remains to be seen, but this is the initial building block to a rebuild.

The old atmosphere was well documented of the allure of toxicity that was being perpetrated under the regime of Bobby Petrino.

“He’s a lot more approachable — I think that would be the appropriate word for it. Coach Petrino recruited me out of high school, and me and Coach Satt are probably closer already, even though it’s only been about six months,” Etheridge added.

This quote opened a platitudinous discussion on twitter about Petrino that is tiresome.

The players have every right to have candid emotions towards Petrino, as some of their careers were compromised because of him. The people directly affected by Petrino have every right to hold disdain towards him to the end of time. But it is clear, Louisville players are moving on from the Petrino era.

“We play noon hoops. Our staff went on a retreat to the lake. I took 30 of them down to the lake. When you do things like that, outside of football, when it’s crunch time in a football game, everybody’s got everybody’s back. We know nobody’s backstabbing anybody else. We’re all in this thing together,” Satterfield stated.

People in the media and in the fan base need to follow the direction of Louisville players and move on from the Petrino debacle as well.

There is an abundance of highly respected public voices in the Louisville media that are continuously harping on how bad of a person Petrino was.

I’m no Petrino fan, trust me, I’m not even a Louisville football fan, and I understand everybody frustrations. I view Louisville athletics through an objective prism with zero emotion.

Here are the facts surrounding Petrino, he is the best coach in Louisville football history as he posted a 77-35 record at Louisville with AP rankings as high as three, six, and nine in four different seasons. Also, help Louisville win the Orange Bowl during the 2006 season. Helped develop Lamar Jackson into a Heisman winner while having Lousiville in the National Championship picture in 2016.

Here are some more facts, players didn’t have Petrino’s cellphone number nor did most of them know where his office was. None of the players knew where he lived and treated the players as if they were objects within the scheme of his football puzzle.

He also told the team they lost the Florida State game not him after calling a pass play that was intercepted when Florida State couldn’t stop a clock with two timeouts with 55 seconds left inside the 30.

There was a Wakeyleaks scandal involving his assistant coach Lonnie Galloway. There were players going to the Athletic Director Vince Tyra.s office during the 2018 season begging for Petrino to be fired.

He also interviewed for the Auburn positions without consent back in 2003. He quit on the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 and resigned by leaving a note on his desk. During his stint at Arkansas, he was fired for falling off his motorcycle while accompanied by a woman who wasn’t his wife.

The evidence is there, Petrino was a good football coach and a terrible human, but it’s time to move on and leave him in the past.

There is a good section of the fanbase that is focused on the Satterfield era and has moved on from the Petrino era.

If certain fans want to view Petrino’s run in Louisville a success, let them, they have that right and vice versa. However, it is time to move on and focus solely on the future of Louisville football.

Some may argue Petrino left the program is such turmoil that it will affect Louisville in the immediate future because of construction of the roster. I disagree with that premise because Louisville’s 2020 recruiting class is ranked in the top-30 according to 247 sports. So the failure of Bobby 2.0 won’t prevent the future growth of Louisville’s program.

If the roster was going to be a major problem, then Satterfield shouldn’t have taken the job. He knows the task at hand and is well equipped to rebuild this program.

Petrino is gone, he has been fired since November 11, 2018. There’s no reason to continuously discuss him whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Petrino isn’t the first coach to leave a program in disarray and he won’t be the last coach to do so. Louisville will recover from the dumpster fire Petrino left the program in, sooner than later.