Bobby Petrino’s Cardinals are 2-5. It gets worse.
WAKEYLEAKS REVENGE: What if Wake Forest gets Bobby Petrino fired?
These teams have bizarre history, and this might be Louisville’s last winnable game all year.
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They have a real chance of finishing 3-9. S&P+ currently favors four of their last five opponents by double digits each, with one noteworthy and BEEF-ridden exception.
Wake Forest, Louisville’s best chance left for picking up a third win and avoiding a nine-game losing streak to begin the post-Lamar Jackson era, has some skullduggerous history with Petrino.
You might recall 2016’s biggest scandal in all of world news: that time Louisville coaches made use of a leaked Wake Forest game plan. I really didn’t view that as any particular egregious misstep, because trying to acquire secret information is part of football and because Wake’s mole had been doing it for years.
However, Petrino’s staff was most associated with the whole thing. Deacs head coach Dave Clawson was clearly most upset about the Louisville game. The blood was so bad, Jackson accused Clawson of talking NFL Draft trash.
“I have no knowledge of the situation,” Petrino said 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.”
Leaked game plans can be withheld from the head coach, sure, but believing Petrino hasn’t traditionally been the most productive activity.
Regardless of how silly this all seems in hindsight, the point is this:
Petrino very well might have a MUST-WIN game against a coaching staff that views him as overseeing an underhanded bunch of deviants.
His team is bad, especially at the thing his teams are supposed to be good at (scoring points). His large buyout would be just another big ole dump on the pile of Louisville buyouts. And Louisville might have a chance to pull a 2018 version of Nebraska hiring Scott Frost (yes, I still happily consider that a slam-dunk hire), with Purdue’s Jeff Brohm being a home-town guy.
His new AD says the school will evaluate things at the end of the season, so a firing probably wouldn’t come right after a theoretical Wake loss, but we’re here to dream out loud.
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