What's Petrino's contract? I heard about the $10 mil buyout clause.
$3,25 Mill a year for 7 years, $10 Mill buyout decreasing after four in increments.
As a Louisville fan, I could smell the hire coming. It helps to remember the absolute reverence the fans had generally for Charlie Strong. Sure, the first criticisms had leaked out, mostly regarding a strange perceived misuse of our offensive abilities and the Heisman possibilities for Bridgewater. What was appearing in its stead was a fairly new defensive excellence at a high level - disregarding the defensive collapse against UCF - a galling loss. But, man, his leaving was still a shot to the chops...no one - I mean no one - saw it coming at all. We were laughing at Vegas for setting 2-1 odds on his hire at Texas, lol, which now seems like whistling past the graveyard, har har wait - the joke's on us.
Full disclosure - it also tempered the depth of emotional feeling in the future for coaches looking for "destinations". Jurich gave Charlie his "Big Break" - releasing him from Assistant Purgatory and giving him absolutely everything he wanted. We all were positive his gratitude - expressed many times - was genuine. His girls were on club volleyball teams and doing well in high school, he seemed at home here. But then Texas called, lol.
BobbyP earned some rancor for his Auburn and LSU flirtations before and some of that - not all - was rationalized by the simple formula that he was that good and that is to be expected. Let's face it, he spent half his career at Louisville in the Top 10. But, yeah, he was far more ly back then, somewhat uncomfortable with media and defensive. But he was a genius and his teams played with an amazing passion. That, above all, endeared him and his results to Louisville. When the Falcons signed him, most of us tossed up our hands...I mean, it's the NFL.
We followed him later, closely, alternately embarrassed or mirthful about his trials, lol. The Arky thing was tawdry and all white trashy as hell and we had ourselves a huge laugh at someone else's misfortune, showing us all the eternal lessons in power and influence that are so corruptible. He stayed in our headlights because he was BobbyP. He had earned some good football karma with us for the most legitimate reasons and we kept that. When Western Kentucky hired him, most of us were delighted because we knew he had Kentucky on his schedule, lol. Most of us at the time thought it resembled the normal pattern of reputation rehabilitation and that Bobby would spend 2 years at Western, then land somewhere like Florida or Notre Dame or whatever. When Western curb stomped Kentucky it was one of our largest laughs of the year, last season. They were in the stand chanting the venerable, tasteless "SEC!! SEC!!" chants and suddenly realizing, "Crap, that's --g Petrino beating our butts again!" Classic, lol. Beautiful cheese.
Then Strong split. Almost immediately of course, the rumors began. It gave us a tiny window of time to assimilate all the changes. Louisville fans were pretty devastated, to be honest. Strong built some power back into the program, undoubtedly, and he had graduated 93 of 98 players he recruited. His strengths were legion and unquestioned.
Among others, I was delighted we were considering Bobby. Granted, the rehabilitation process of our national Punishment Culture demanded another year in Purgatory, but this was a trying situation and, frankly, next year, Petrino would be long gone. In retrospect, we look at Bobby's obvious stated interest and the fact that, at his lowest ebb, his confidant in the trade during his year out of football was the man who just rehired him...Jurich. They had not only mended fences, but he was instrumental in Bobby getting the gig at Western.
We had been watching him this past Summer, caddying for his daughter at her Summer events (she is a UofL golfer) and we displayed pics of him playing with this whole new cult - grandchildren. His image was already softened somewhat substantially at our end.
Bobby never really "went away", just as the good vibes surrounding Charlie Strong won't either. They both won and supplied huge, satisfying entertainment on the largest stage.
