Would Chris Petersen leave Boise State to coach at Florida?
If this were Bobby Petrino, it would take him all of four minutes to clean out his office at Arkansas and be on the first plane to Gainesville.
But Bobby Petrino Chris Petersen is not. To Petersen, loyalty still means something, which is one of the reasons he may stay right where he’s at in Boise.
Since Urban Meyer stepped down at Florida, Petersen’s name has been brought up in connection with the Gators’ open head coaching job. And why not? He’s compiled a 60-5 record at Boise State and has turned the program into a yearly national title contender (even though the BCS would never allow the Broncos to actual contend for a championship). He should be the type of coach that Florida wants to replace Meyer. He has a great work ethic, his players love him and perhaps no coach in college football gets the most out of his recruits as Petersen does at Boise State.
But would he even want to leave Idaho? The assumption is that every head coach wants to land a bigger and better job, but the SEC is a different animal. If he took the Florida job, Petersen would have to recruit in the SEC (something he’s never done) and coach SEC-caliber talent (another thing he hasn’t had to contend with at Boise). Former Bronco coaches Dirk Koetter and Dan Hawkins also struggled when they left Idaho, so that’s something to consider as well.
That said, it would be insane to think that Petersen couldn’t recruit in the nation’s best conference or that he couldn’t handle blue chip prospects. But maybe he doesn’t want to either. He has long stated how happy he is coaching at Boise and seeing as how he’s not Petrino, I tend to believe him.
Petersen has a good thing going at Boise and it’ll be interesting to see if his name grows synonymous with the Florida job over these next couple of months. For right now though, it seems likely that he’ll stay put.
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I don’t think anyone coaching Florida would have trouble recruiting. That being said, sometimes it’s better to be a big fish in a little pond . . .
Wow, you’re an idiot. I guess you didn’t see Bobby Petrino’s contract extension. He could have flirted with Florida but he put an end to any speculation early. That’s admirable of him. But people like you still hold the Atlanta Falcons job against him. He was brought in to coach Michael Vick. Vick went to jail. Have you ever been baited and switched? If you were, didn’t you feel justified in making a new decision based on new facts that weren’t what they were supposed to be? I doubt the Falcons would have even been his NFL gig of choice if not for Vick. He approached Arkansas not once but twice and took a huge pay cut to come to Fayetteville. So him signing the extension was no surprise to someone like me who knows the story. But people like you are sure to judge when they don’t know what they are talking about.
Wow Donald, how does Petrino’s colon look from the position you’re in? You’re so far up his ass I’m surprised you had time to call me an idiot.
Petrino also signed a 10-year, $25.6 million contract extension with Louisville only to flirt with Auburn, LSU and the Raiders before finally taking the Falcons job. I’m sure people in Louisville “knew the situation” and didn’t think he was going to leave them either.
You’re making excuses for him and you should look up the definition of bait and switch before you use it in a sentence. The Falcons didn’t hire Petrino knowing Vick would go to jail and therefore he’d be stuck. That would be a bait and switch. Was it unfortunate that Vick was hauled off when Petrino wanted to work with him? Yes. But Petirno’s flaws as a pro coach were exposed each and every Sunday anyway. He was being eaten alive on a weekly basis because he didn’t know how to make in-game adjustments, he had no clue on how to handle NFL personalities and his miss-use of players like Ovie Mughelli was staggering to say the least.
The only thing he did right in Atlanta was get Roddy White to come out of his shell. The rest was a complete and utter disaster and one of the worst head coaching jobs (both on and off the field) we’ll ever see in our lifetime. THE WORST.
So no, he didn’t run off to the college ranks because he didn’t have the opportunity to coach Michael Vick. That’s what people like you (people who “know the story”) want to believe. The truth is that he couldn’t hack it as a pro head coach and he belonged in the college ranks. He knew that, which is why he left in the middle of the night while sticking a note on players’ lockers like the gutless wonder he is. The guy is a snake charmer and it looks like he found another naïve victim in you.
So him signing the extension was no surprise to someone like me who knows the story. But people like you are sure to judge when they don’t know what they are talking about.
How smug.