Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

11/28/2011 at 3:31pm

Image by Mark Wagner

Coach Bobby Petrino, shown here against Ole Miss, is a fiery presence on the Arkansas sideline.

Bobby Petrino's across-the-field gesturing and apparent cursing of LSU's Les Miles, as well as their brief handshake after the game, was among the big topics Saturday when the LSU faithful were discussing the Tigers 41-17 win Friday over Arkansas.

Hokie Gajan, the former LSU and New Orleans Saints running back who now does color commentary for the Saints radio broadcasts, was part of a call-in show Saturday on New Orleans' powerful WWL-AM radio and led the callers in a grilling of Petrino's actions, calling it unsportsmanlike. "Coward" and other terms were used.

Maybe the Louisianans' reaction doesn't mean anything to Arkansas Razorback fans.

But that sideline tirade — whatever reason prompted it — won't be received well in areas where Arkansas needs to step up its recruiting.

At least Jeff Palermo, a New Orleans blogger and brief guest on Gajan's show, put some perspective into Petrino's reaction.

As Palermo noted, we don't know what might exist in terms of Petrino's relationship with Miles, and perhaps some bad blood over recruiting (Palermo specifically noted Petrino's concern with "negative" recruiting by Miles) prompted some of the Arkansas coach's tantrum. The "running up the score" excuse seems to be far-fetched for a number of reasons: the first being that Petrino wasn't exactly the type to shut down his offense at Louisville in piling up big numbers; and Arkansas didn't hesitate to hit the mid-to-high 40s in its last three home games.

Also, as Palermo pointed out, Petrino had been through one of the hardest weeks in his coaching career, trying to keep a team together that had lost a well-liked teammate. In Arkansas it was obvious to anyone how hard Garrett Uekman's death had hit Petrino, and the head coach refused to do any media interviews in the run-up to the game.

We in the Tiger Stadium weren't privy to all that the telecast offered — camera views of Petrino during the game, his halftime interview with Tracy Wolfson and the like — but we're told by people who watched that he seemed unusually on edge the entire game.

In other circumstances, it would be easy to pile on the Hogs and Petrino — the defense for seemingly quitting in the fourth quarter when LSU went up 31-17, and the head coach for losing his cool in an unseemly way. But we'll cut some slack knowing that when the game was getting away from the Hogs early in the fourth quarter, everything the Hogs had managed to hide away to focus on the game at hand suddenly was present again. An emotional collapse ensued.

But, that said, were Petrino's actions necessary? This couldn't have been handled privately between the two head coaches in a phone call, or at the SEC meetings in Destin? Petrino had to know the cameras were on him, catching his every action — as they have since he arrived from his short stint in the NFL and Atlanta to Arkansas.

A lot of folks in the South don't cotton to anyone using some of the language the coach was apparently employing in his effort to be noticed late in Friday's game. We're pretty sure he wasn't saying "Fine then, make a field goal."

In fact, Petrino has to know that the way he's viewed publicly, from the way he treats players and coaches in practice when recruits or TV cameras are around, to his sideline demeanor in games, can determine whether a recruit chooses to play for his program.

LSU's Les Miles may be goofy as all get out, but his tough but fair demeanor appeals to recruits. He's proven to be Nick Saban's equal in recruiting in the Bayou State.

BUILDING THE DEFENSE: How nice it would be if the state of Arkansas produced a handful of Parade All-American high school defensive stars or Rivals 4- and 5-star prospects like the states of Alabama and Louisiana have developed. Both Alabama and LSU have built their superb defenses mostly with homegrown talent. And, Donta Hightower's case at 'Bama, his Tennessee hometown is between Nashville and Birmingham and within an easy drive of Tuscaloosa.

Draw a circle with a 200-mile radius from Fayetteville, and do the same with Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge. Then note where many of the top high school players in the country have been produced the past five years; you'd see the disadvantage Arkansas faces in recruiting.

Within the state, Arkansas has produced just a handful of defensive players, period, in the past six years.

Petrino's job in building a defense to match his prolific offense isn't the same as what Les Miles and Nick Saban face. Petrino has to employ a much wider net and, if he wants a defense as dominant as LSU's, somehow convince a half-dozen stars from other states to snub their home university and play for Arkansas instead. To be fair, LSU under Miles has extended its reach for defensive talent from east Texas to the mid-Atlantic (Sam Montgomery, for example, was one of the top prep players in South Carolina in 2009).

Arkansas' been lucky in its past if the Hogs pulled in a couple of those playmakers occasionally. Usually, the source of that talent was Texas.

It's no accident that Oklahoma State is ranked No. 3 in this week's BCS poll, as much time as the Cowboys have spent recruiting Texas for 75 percent of their roster. It didn't just start with current coach Mike Gundy.

Les Miles got things rolling in his time in Stillwater before landing the LSU job. The guy can recruit.

He'll also eat grass, and he'll make indecipherable declarations and surprise fans with out-of-the-norm calls. But he won't point across the field at Nick Saban or Bobby Petrino or any other coach and curse him, fully aware that the TV camera is on him.

He also wasn't running the score up on Arkansas early in the fourth quarter when LSU was throwing the football. Arkansas was still using run blitzes to futilely stop the LSU rushing game. We're certain if Petrino and Arkansas had played it vanilla in the fourth quarter, Miles would have done the same.

Tagged: LSU Tiger Stadium, Nick Saban, LSU Tigers, Southeastern Conference, Les Miles, Bobby Petrino