AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > December > 15 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USAnd just who hired Petrino?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Personal memo to the reader: A columnist writes his own opinion, not someone else’s — or so it is proclaimed in our sports section. Therefore, this shall be a collection of my own after a stressful stretch which the One Great Scorer might label “The Week of Weird.”
It has been as if we are trying to save someone else’s sinking ship. But no matter how much we bail, the onus lies with Arthrur Blank, and if Mrs. Blank’s opinionating is getting in his way, I leave it to him to clear the air. A man who gets involved in a fray between a man and his wife, I’ve often heard it said, is a fool.
As many of us have said, the original sin goes back to the day Blank fired Dan Reeves. Many of us have it engraved on our minds. Jim Mora wasn’t such a bad hire — I’ve always wondered why he sneered at being referred to as “Jr.” — until we discovered that he’d rather have been at Washington, his alma mater, not the Redskins.
But then the situation is compounded. They hire an itinerant coach out of college, who has a reputation for underhanded dealing — entertaining Auburn and its surreptitious delegation — and with little or no credentials for handling the load of a head coach in the National Football League. His track record is that of an itinerant. It’s publicly recorded in the Falcons’ own press book — 16 moves since 1983. He just about covered the nation. There was nothing to suggest that that he could be a liar and triple-crosser.
He dealt through Jerry Jones, another of Blank’s fellow NFL club owners; Arkansas officials, and behind the Falcons’ back. Even Frank Broyles, who is retired as Arkansas’ athletics director, got involved, unwisely.
And there was the Arkansas situation itself, an institution scorned by its own coach, an alumnus with the fitting name of Nutt, who took a flying leap across the river to Ole Miss. Intregrity among football coaches is at a low ebb, college and professional.
An owner who got off to such an eloquent start with the Falcons, surfing along on a wave of relief that came with fresh ownership, now has instilled in us a guilt complex. Rankin Smith hadn’t been too bad after all. He brought in Dan Reeves. They won a division championship and played in the Super Bowl. And this is what Atlanta gets in return.
Tell you this, selling hammers and nails and siding and such is a lot less complicated than breaking in as a neophyte owner in a professional football league. I prefer what Bernie Marcus did with his Home Depot money. The Georgia Aquarium is a treat all of us can enjoy, from babyhood to seniority.
In the interim, the Falcons high command continues to indulge in creative controversy. With Hue Jackson on hand, an offensive mind with game-planning experience, they install the defensive veteran Emmitt Thomas as temporary head coach. Surely they don’t enjoy piling on more chaos.
That’s about all I have to say. You feel strangely detached riding the sideline, watching this disaster unveiled. You wonder how it could have come to this, from riding the crest of exuberation into the Georgia Dome, striking a vigorous relationship with fans eagerly cheering his arrival, to sinking into the mire of a franchise’s disintegration.
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