To those who suggest that Bobby Petrino is Lucy with the football and Razorback fans are a bunch of Charlie Browns, The Hog Blogger, one of our occasional contributors and the proprietor of the much-missed blog of the same name, would like to say that he, for one, knows what we're getting into.
I don’t trust Bobby Petrino.
Put out your torches and set down the pitchforks — let me explain. Why is it that I find it so hard to trust our brand-new, bona fide Razorback messiah?
Funny story, actually. If you’ve got the time, I’d love to tell it.
Without the blog to tend to, I have a lot more time to just hang out in the basement of my mom’s trailer with my sister, so on this particular Tuesday afternoon a few months back, that’s precisely what I was doing.
Anyways, this guy gets up on the TV and is all like, "Blah blah blah, Bobby Petrino is a liar, a traitor, Arkansas fans don’t know what they’re getting themselves into!" I figured something was amiss, and this slick-lookin’ character must have been mistaken, so I start up the lawnmower and head over to the library so I can see what the Internets had to say.
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I head to my home base for sports news and opinion, ESPN, and see what their ever-wise columnists had to say.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered.
Libelous claims were being tossed about with these false prophets claiming that he would do to my beloved Hogs what he had done to these other teams I’d never even heard of. Falcons? Louisville? Who wouldn’t leave a team whose only claim to fame is being sponsored by a bat company? We have Wal-Mart, which, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years, is the largest corporation in America. (Suck it, Exxon/Mobil.)
One guy even compared him to some sort of shark, which I didn’t really take as an insult, since sharks are awesome. How many other creatures have a week devoted solely to their existence?
The Hogs are a certified, Division I program in the S-E-C! Why would a coach waste his time when he has the opportunity to coach an elite, top-level program in the only league that matters?
Even as the hatred slowly built up in my fiery, Southern soul for the malicious charlatans at ESPiN bent on destroying my favorite team, I couldn’t help but think they had a point.
Maybe my newest man-crush wasn’t sent here from above to make everything in the world right. Maybe he wouldn’t be here for eternity. After I got over the initial shock of my wildest dreams maybe not coming true, the strangest thing happened.
I realized I was OK with that. Even if he doesn’t stay here for the next 30 years, he’ll at least be here for the next 20, and for me, that’s enough. I don’t consider myself a smart man, but from where I’m sitting, that makes sense.
So you heard it here first, Hog fans. If, 20 years down the road, Bobby Petrino decides to leave our Fayettevillian oasis for Knoxville or Tuscaloosa, I’ll have no hard feelings. Do I think the guy’s going to win 10 national championships while he’s here? No, of course not. That’s unrealistic.
But, I will say, If I were a betting man, I’d put the over/under at six.
So, with 20 years of at least decent football to erase the last 10 years of hellish memories and images that will never leave my tortured soul, it will be well worth it. (Note: There is still blood spattered on the wall of my mom’s trailer from the oh-so-memorable Stoernover.)
So, Mr. Petrino, from the mouth of The Hog Blogger, thanks for the memories. (Proactively, of course.)
P.S. - Just kidding about all the trailer stuff. My mom’s trailer doesn’t have a basement.