Louisville Football: Firing of Bobby Petrino a long time coming
Louisville football has cut ties with head coach Bobby Petrino, this time on the Cardinals’ terms. This is something that should have happened already.
It’s not easy to say goodbye to someone you love, just tell that to Louisville football who brought Bobby Petrino back as head coach in 2014, nearly a decade after he left for the Atlanta Falcons job — he went 3-10 and resigned before the season ended to take the job at Arkansas.
Petrino’s career has been as up-and-down as they come but he’s always been a fairly decent college football coach.
On Sunday, however, he was let go from Louisville on his second stint with the program after getting off to a 2-8 start to the season. His Cardinals were just walloped by Syracuse on the road, 54-23, and many were surprised he even made it this far into the season.
Petrino’s time should have been up long ago, especially since he failed to win 10 games with Lamar Jackson, a Heisman-winning quarterback.
Sure, he won at least 11 games two times in four years in his first stint with Louisville, but with the talent he had in place over the past few years, the team fell far short of expectations, wasting the career of Jackson on slightly above average teams that went nowhere.
Moreover, his recruiting classes never broke the top-30 and it his next class (2019) was ranked 74th in the country, according to 247Sports. That’s not how you compete with the Clemsons, Miamis, Florida States and Virginia Techs of the ACC.
Louisville was sinking fast and the Cardinals made this move before the program was unsalvageable, which it very well could have been if he made it past this season.
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It’s time to look elsewhere for a fresh start and a coach who can get Louisville back to the 10-win range. Jeff Brohm, anyone?