Gareth Patterson/Associated Press
Bobby Petrino was fired at Arkansas after a motorcycle accident led to revelations of an extramarital affair.
At a restaurant near the campus of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Eric Bain-Selbo sat down with a group of philosophy students on Monday. They talked about football.
Hours earlier, the university introduced Bobby Petrino, who was fired by Arkansas in April for a scandal involving an affair with a female staff member, as their new coach. A nationwide debate ensued — about public forgiveness, the blinding pressure to win and whether Western Kentucky had made a Faustian decision to trade its morality for the possibility of on-field success.
"He didn't go to jail, but he lost his job. Is that enough?" said Bain-Selbo, a co-director of the university's Institute for Citizenship and Social Responsibility. "A lot of people feel, well, no."
Few would argue that Petrino, with a career record of 75-26, has not been successful. He turned Arkansas into a top-10 program before the scandal that began with a motorcycle accident in April. He was 41-9 in four years at Louisville.
He is not the first coach to be offered a second chance. But given his transgressions, his reputation and how quickly he rebounded, his hiring raises the question: is there anything coaches cannot get away with so as long as they win?
"In college football, nothing surprises me," said Paul Finebaum, a popular sports radio host in Birmingham, Ala., who also has a show on SiriusXM. "It's about big dollars and television and building the brand, the footprint. It's really not about anything else." On Dec. 26, Western Kentucky (7-5) will play Central Michigan in the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl — a far cry from the Bowl Championship Series title game, but a big step for a small program still in its Football Bowl Subdivision infancy. The Hilltoppers moved up to football's highest level in 2008 and have yet to finish with better than a 7-5 record.
Their previous coach, Willie Taggart, left on Friday to take the job at South Florida. This did not come as a surprise to the first-year athletic director Todd Stewart, who began subtly researching coaching candidates as early as October.
Petrino was his No. 1 candidate all along, Stewart said Monday at a news conference with nearly 400 people in attendance.
Eight months earlier, Arkansas had fired Petrino after what the university's athletic director Jeff Long called his "pattern of misleading and manipulative behavior." Petrino's troubles began when he was involved in a motorcycle crash. He initially told Long that he was riding alone on his motorcycle, then admitted he had a passenger. That passenger turned out to be Jessica Dorrell, 25, a former Arkansas volleyball player with whom Petrino admitted having an inappropriate relationship.
Petrino, who is married with four children, had also used his position to hire Dorrell over 158 other applicants as the student-athlete development coordinator. Petrino was signed through 2017 at about $3.5 million a year, but he did not contest his dismissal.
The firing was viewed as another indictment against a coach with a poor personal track record. He had signed a 10-year deal to stay at Louisville in 2006, but he left for the Atlanta Falcons six months later. He arrived in Fayetteville, Ark., after leaving the Falcons with three games remaining in his first season, a move that was disparaged throughout the N.F.L.
At his introductory news conference Monday, Petrino acknowledged his mistakes at Arkansas.
"We've always had a cardinal rule about knowing the difference between right and wrong, and I didn't follow that," Petrino said. "I chose the wrong avenue to go."
Petrino signed a four-year contract with Western Kentucky worth $850,000 annually, making him the highest paid coach in the Sun Belt Conference. It includes a $1.2 million buyout clause.
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