Petrino’s Situation Not Same As Mike Price’s When He Was Hired At UTEP, Stull Says

Bobby Petrino, 51, having been fired Tuesday night for not being forthcoming to Arkansas school administrators over his recent motorcyle accident and inappropriate relationship with 25-year-old football staff member Jessica Dorrell, his once-promising career is in limbo.

He has not been a stranger to controversy. While coaching at Louisville, he met with Auburn officials about that school’s head coaching job when Tommy Tuberville was still coaching the Tigers. Petrino abruptly left the Atlanta Falcons and took the Arkansas job with three games left on the NFL team’s 2007 schedule.

There have been instances where scarred coaches have landed on their feet.

In May 2003, then-Alabama football coach Mike Price was fired for what the school called improper behavior after Price spent time at a strip club and drank too much the night before a charity golf outing. The humiliation continued after two women from the club were quoted in a Sports Illustrated story about a wild night in Price’s hotel room.

In December 2003, Texas-El Paso hired Price, who had denied the women’s allegations and sued the magazine for $20 million. The suit was settled out of court in 2005, and Price said at the time that he felt vindicated by the settlement.

UTEP athletics director Bob Stull, who brought Price to the school, said Wednesday that the Petrino and Price situations were “not even close” to being the same.

“Mike had too much to drink one night. That’s really what happened,” he said.

Stull said the school did an extensive background check before Price was even interviewed, and Stull, a former UTEP football coach, already had known Price for 20 years.

Read the full USA Today article here.