Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

2/2/2012 at 9:28am

Bobby Petrino signed a contract last year intended to keep him at Arkansas until 2017. Unlike other lengthy contracts in college sports, this one all but guarantees he’ll be here through the duration of it.

How? In case you’ve forgotten, the buyout on the deal doesn’t fall below $4 million until the final year. Neither party can break the contract for less than $10.8 million until 2016.

Essentially, Petrino and Arkansas are together for better or worse (not that anything significant suggests there's a 'for worse' situation brewing).

Yet, Petrino’s past is still apparently used against him in recruiting. That’s the word from Thayer Evans of FoxSports.com, who offers behind-the-scenes details of the recruitment of Dorial Green-Beckham. Missouri ended up with the nation’s top wide receiver prospect, but Arkansas was in the mix with Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama.

Safe to say there is no love lost between the Sooner and Razorback staffs. Things got heated on the recruiting trail as they tried to out-dirty recruit each other.

Oklahoma, according to Tracy Beckham as quoted by Evans, was active in using Petrino’s Atlanta Falcons departure in 2007 as a negative. Here’s more from the article:

Besides Arkansas’ graduation rate, Tracy Beckham was also worried about Petrino “having a little reputation,” which she hesitated to discuss.

“It’s what everybody will tell you, that he left his team in midseason,” she said in reference to Petrino’s resignation in 2007 as coach of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons after 13 games to take his current job. “There are other teams that bring that up a lot.”

Oklahoma did so the most, Tracy Beckham said. The Sooners thought Arkansas was their main competition for her son, and vice versa.

There are plenty of other less-than-favorable details in the Evans’ article. It allegedes a voicemail from a purported Razorback booster was left on John Beckham’s phone offering a donation to Green-Beckham’s high school football program. And — shock of all shocks — somebody tried to buy drinks for a college prospect!

Online reaction to the article (check my replies on Twitter) has been mostly anger from Arkansas fans. They’re upset at the way Petrino is portrayed and find most of the Razorback-related details to be unfavorable.

Not that anybody looks great in the story (well, except Paul Petrino. Love his "nobody can coach him better than me" line.). Which brings me to this...

If there is one positive to the situation: People are paying attention to Arkansas and see its football as an increasingly relevant brand and/or threat.

Relevance brings its share of headaches. Opponents try to dirty recruit for big-time prospects you're after, national media outlets sometimes shine a not-so-positive light on your boosters, recruiting tactics and your head coach’s (way overblown) job history.

Tagged: Texas Longhorns, Mack Brown, Gary Pinkel, Missouri Tigers, Bobby Petrino, Arkansas Razorbacks, Bob Stoops, Oklahoma Sooners