UA has distorted view of integrity

FAYETTEVILLE — Immortalized on a 2012 T-shirt as “Long on Integrity,” University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long ought to be long on thanks to Bobby Petrino.

Thanks to Arkansas’ former football coach, Long has been selected to chair the first NCAA Division I football playoff committee, received a $50,000 bonus last year, a $100,000 bonus this week, a $100,000 raise the remainder of this year and another $100,000 raise coming in July.

If Petrino hadn’t been so successful on the field and simultaneously allowed to conduct himself like a profane egomaniac given no cause for concern there could be retribution off the field, nationally Long might still be thought of as that Arkansas athletic director who followed Frank Broyles.

Instead, Long is bestowed by UA Chancellor G. David Gearhart with more riches, this time for being courted by the University of Texas after his playoff chairman appointment.

All this stemmed from Long firing Petrino, whose behavior Long didn’t confront from the time he hired him in December 2007 until it was irrevocable that Petrino be fired in April 2012.

While Long was lavishly lauded for firing Petrino, Atlanta sportscaster John Kincade tweeted: “Long was willing to sell his soul to Petrino to win football games and is now heralded as a moral beacon for firing him? Only in America.”

Kincade experienced Petrino when Petrino coached the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 and abandoned them for the UA while the Falcons were still in the middle of their season.

As Louisville’s coach, Petrino surreptitiously interviewed for the Auburn job while Tommy Tuberville, the Auburn coach for whom Petrino once worked, was still coaching Auburn.

Steve Kragthorpe’s struggles in 2007 at Louisville, when he inherited the scorched earth that Petrino left behind for Atlanta, sounded another alarm. All went unheeded. Most came true, including Arkansas’ 3-6 mess that Coach Bret Bielema endures now after Arkansas’ collapse to 4-8 last season under Petrino’s hired hands headed by John L. Smith, Long’s interim choice.

Petrino’s 2010 and 2011 Hogs shined at 10-3 and 11-2, so Long and Gearhart heard no evil and saw no evil.

Then Petrino’s motorcycle accident publicly revealed that he had promoted his mistress from the Razorback Foundation to his football staff and bought her a car.

For any other UA department head, firing Petrino would have been routine and probably accompanied by questions from higher-ups sharply inquiring why this went unchecked for so long. But in college athletics the mighty are so nearly untouchable that firing a successful coach transforms an athletic director into a national novelty bulging with bonuses.

In less corporate times, the athletic department custodians, secretaries, clerks, groundskeepers, etc... could take a bowl-check bonus or join the UA’s official party with bowl tickets and lodging at the team’s hotel.

Now the UA marches in the 21st Century step of Wall Street over Main Street. Bye-bye bowl bonuses for those who handle clerk and maintenance work.

That was an injustice to those who served during Petrino’s three bowls.

If anyone at the UA deserved a bonus, it would be those subjected to the tone Bobby Petrino set while his bosses looked away.