After a preseason that featured an explosive back-and-forth with Nick Saban after the Alabama head coach made accusations about cheating and buying players through NIL, Texas A&M football coach Jimbo Fisher responded by producing a disappointing 5-7 season. To turn things around he’s hiring Bobby Petrino to be his offensive coordinator — one of the most disgraceful coaches to ever blow a whistle.
College Station is a sh*tshow.
After spending less than a month on the staff at UNLV, Petrino is back on the big stage due to Fisher’s desperation as he now owns the keys to the Aggies’ offense. On paper, this looks like a smart move. Petrino has been an offensive genius everywhere he’s been, and was the man behind Lamar Jackson at Louisville. However, the fine print will remind you why people are cringing.
Back in 2012, Petrino was fired as the head coach at Arkansas after it was discovered that he was lying about a motorcycle accident he’d been in. Now, the part about being in an accident and not wearing his helmet wasn’t the issue. What led to him losing his job is that the married man was on his motorcycle with his “girlfriend” — who happened to be a “Student-Athlete Development Coordinator” he had recently hired to his staff. He’s the creep I was talking about in the headline.
But wait, there’s more.
Back in 2007, Petrino was getting ready to take the NFL by storm when he was going to pair his high-powered offense with Michael Vick as the new head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. But it never happened due to the dog-fighting thing. The Falcons were awful that season. Instead of fixing it, though, Petrino left and took the Arkansas job in the middle of the season, leaving a 3-10 Atlanta squad behind.
“I said to Bobby (Petrino), ‘Tell me what you want me to tell them. Tell me what you’re feeling.’ I remember him standing up, reaching out and shaking my hand and saying, ‘You tell them you have a coach,’’ Falcons owner Arthur Blank said in a 2016 interview. “We played Monday night. I can’t remember who it was against. We lost the game, and then later that evening ... I was watching Coach Petrino up at the University of Arkansas doing the ‘Pig Sooie’ thing. This was all within a six-, eight-hour span. So I was sitting in bed actually, and I was watching that, after throwing up all over the place — no, not literally. But it turned out that he had decided that was what he was going to do before.”
Yeah… so, that’s the guy that Fisher just hired.
To make the situation in College Station even more toxic, the Aggies staff also includes two more terrible human beings. Steve Addazio is Fisher’s offensive line coach, despite that in 2021 The Coloradoan reported that he “likely’ made a racially insensitive comment and a statement that indirectly threatened a custodian’s job during an October 2020 altercation,” when he was the head coach at Colorado State. The janitor was Black and claims that Addazio called him a “boy.” He’s the racist I was talking about in the headline.
And then there’s DJ Durkin, who serves as Fisher’s defensive coordinator. In case you forgot, Durkin was fired as the head coach at Maryland in 2018 due to running a program so vile, disturbing, and dysfunctional that it was found culpable in Jordan McNair’s death — as the training staff misdiagnosed his symptoms after he passed out during a taxing offseason workout, leading to him dying from heatstroke. He’s the bonafide maniac I was talking about in the headline.
At this point, Fisher might as well hire Art Briles as his new quarterbacks coach and Urban Meyer as an offensive consultant, and announce that he’s collected all five of the Toxic Coaches Infinity Stones — white privilege is inevitable, or whatever Thanos said.
And to make matters worse at Texas A&M, on Wednesday night the men’s basketball team started their road game against Florida facing a deficit before the opening tipoff. The Gators took a 1-0 lead after making a technical foul free throw that was assessed to the Aggies for leaving their jerseys at the hotel — delaying the game.
Texas A&M wound up winning 66-63, so at least one thing went right for the Aggies this week.