Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

2/3/2012 at 11:47am

Rarely does losing bring out the best in people. Being on the wrong end of the scoreboard isn’t pleasurable for anybody, especially if you’re part of the multi-billion dollar industry that is college football.

As we were reminded again this week by a pair of SEC coaches who get paid millions not to lose, there is a right way and wrong way to handle not getting what you want. You can handle it like Bobby Petrino did or you can (mis)handle it like LSU’s Les Miles.

It was during a recruiting roundup event that Miles gave an unexpected look at what’s under that hat of his. Quarterback Gunner Kiel backed out on a commitment to the Tigers and chose Notre Dame instead. Miles was clearly unhappy with not landing the Indiana native and let fans know it. Thanks to a video shot by the Daily Reveille, LSU’s student paper, we know of how poorly Miles expressed his displeasure.

"We needed a quarterback in this class. There was a young man from Indiana that thought about coming to the Bayou State,” Miles says as fans begin to boo. “He did not necessarily have the chest and the ability to lead a program. So you know."

Miles, cheered by his own fans for the comments, is rightfully getting killed by folks that don’t wear purple and gold.

CBSSports.com (where I first saw the video) has it posted with less-than-favorable commentary. ESPN has the video too. Ran it on TV and online.

Fans voting in a USA Today online poll chose to describe the quotes as “bad taste… without an ounce of class” with 72 percent of the vote. “Just a coach preaching to his choir” was option No. 2 at 17 percent.

Was that the Gospel of Sore Losing that Miles was preaching from on Wednesday? Give him credit for knowing his audience, I suppose.

Petrino, who lost five-star wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham to Missouri, played to his audience too. But he did it in a way that bolstered, not damaged his reputation.

Arkansas coaches felt they had a good shot at the Parade and USA Today player of the year going into the final week of what had been a three-year recruitment process. Behind closed doors they were said to be “fuming” about the Green-Beckham decision.

But you would have never known it from Petrino comments to media on Signing Day. And in more friendly settings like an invitation-only recruiting roundup with high-level donors on Wednesday and a general admission event on Thursday, Petrino didn’t handle the loss any differently.

“Well, we wish him good luck,” Petrino told the press. “Like I said before, we're really fired up about our class and what we've got coming back. We've led the SEC in passing the last three years. So we feel good about not only how we recruit, what we do recruit at the quarterback and wide receiver position. A lot of it is development. When they get here, they've got to be able to get in the weight room. Get in the offseason program and grind and improve physically. We've been able to do that very, very well this year.”

Miles, who has always been portrayed as sort of a lovable goofball, now has a bit of perception to overcome with recruits and recruits' parents. He blasts a kid for not following through on a commitment, but let’s not forget Miles is the same guy who entered the dorm of an incoming freshman on move-in day 2010 and informed him his scholarship was being pulled because LSU had oversigned.

Nice.

Lots of Arkansas fans wondered in November why other coaches don’t get publicly roasted for their missteps. They wanted to see somebody else criticized for an error the way Petrino was for what I like to refer to as the “Slow-Mo Mo-Fo.”

Well, now you’ve got proof it happens to other guys. It even happens to the ones that seem to have a good relationship with the media.

As I said in the days following the LSU loss, and as I’ll say again with more authority now that another SEC coach is in this sort of spotlight: being one of the Top 10 highest-paid coaches at a Top 10 program comes with a price. People pay attention to everything you do, whether it’s win games, lose games, badmouth a recruit, blow up on the sidelines or donate money to a children’s hospital.

And to be clear: badmouthing the recruit publicly is the greater offense by far.

There’s a right way to handle losing. Then there’s the way Miles did it. A way that suggests somebody could have used a little more, to borrow his phrase, “chest.”

Tagged: LSU Tigers, Dorial Green-Beckham, Gunner Kiel , Les Miles, Arkansas Razorbacks