Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich released a statement Wednesday to tell the Cardinals’ side of the Wakeyleaks story in which former Wake Forest assistant coach and radio host Tommy Elrod shared game plan information with opponents (including U of L). After an internal investigation, Jurich said Louisville’s offensive coordinator and defensive coaching staff did receive some information.
Bobby Petrino said he didn’t know anything about Wake Forest’s leaks. But Louisville did.
Wakeyleaks takes another turn.
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
That means Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino was either out of the loop or lying last month when he said this.
“I have no knowledge of the situation,” Petrino said in a statement at the time. “We take a lot of pride in the way we operate our program. As I’ve stated already this season, my coaching philosophy has always been to play the game with sportsmanship. Right now, our focus is on our game tomorrow at Houston and finishing the 2016 season strong.”
Now does Petrino have some plausible deniability? Of course, not that his personal history encourages benefit of the doubt.
But if the information was shared with the coordinator on Petrino’s favored side of the ball, and Jurich admits that it was shared with the defensive staff as well, you tell me how Petrino didn’t know. We’ll probably learn some more whenever the ACC finishes its investigation into the situation.
Jurich goes with the nothing-to-see-here approach, but the two coaches named in his statement didn’t just simply know each other for 10 years. They were on the same Wake Forest coaching staff in 2011 and 2012. It’s also not even like they were on opposite sides of the ball. The two were co-coordinators of Wake’s passing game.
But to wave this off as just “a few plays” probably doesn’t make folks at Wake feel any better about this, given that the game was razor-thin for three quarters. Wake led going into the fourth, 12-10, before the Cardinals boat-raced them to a blowout 44-12 victory. To act like there isn’t any advantage derived from something like this is ludicrous. To act like Petrino didn’t have any idea what was going on might be as well.
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