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So vacation can wait, because Arkansas just hired John L. Smith as interim coach. A story like this, a mystifying, insulting, embarrassing, dishonorable story like this, doesn't come along all that often. But this one is here today, and vacation can wait. Tomorrow I can rest. Today? Today I have to explain why John L. Smith is one of the dumbest hires Arkansas could have made.
I mean, I'm sure there are dumber hires, but I can't fathom them. See, my imagination isn't good enough to conjure up a name that fits Arkansas worse than John L. Smith fits Arkansas, and this has nothing to do with football
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Bobby Petrino was a bad guy. No honor, no loyalty, no decency. He was that way before Jessica Dorrell, so let's leave her and their affair out of it. Simply from an employee standpoint, the way Petrino once interviewed in midseason at Louisville for the Auburn job held by a friend, continued to flirt and flirt and flirt with other jobs, later left an NFL team in midseason ... well, you get the point. Bobby Petrino is a rotten employee. A guy who better win, and win big, to mask the fact he's such a bad guy.
And to replace Bobby Petrino, Arkansas hired a guy who was just hired at Weber State. Hadn't even coached a game at Weber State. Just worked the spring scrimmage, and now will see himself out. Thanks for the job.
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It's John L. Smith's alma mater.
That's all. Just his alma mater. The school he attended from 1968-71, where he played both ways -- quarterback and linebacker -- and was the Big Sky scholar-athlete as a senior. After returning to his alma mater in December, Smith talked about leading Weber State to the national championship and gushed, "I've always had a place in my heart for Weber State."
This is who Arkansas picked to replace the indecent Petrino: It picked a guy who didn't have the decency to coach a single game after being hired by his alma mater. Jeff Long, the Arkansas athletics director, might be the single worst judge of character I've ever seen. I mean, this is the guy who hired Petrino from Atlanta in the middle of Petrino's first season as the Falcons head coach. And then to replace Petrino, Long first wanted the Seahawks' Pete Carroll, who left Southern California months before the NCAA could hammer USC with the harshest football sanctions since SMU got the death penalty in the 1980s.
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John L. Smith was never going to turn down this job. Not out of loyalty to Weber State. Not even out of decency. Decency, John L. Smith? This is the same guy who left Louisville for Michigan State late in the 2002 season. How late? Well, it was like this. Louisville was playing Marshall in the GMAC Bowl when the news broke that Smith, coaching there on the sideline, had taken the Michigan State job. TV cameras showed Louisville players learning -- during the game -- that their coach had taken another job.
That's John L. Smith. As Weber State just learned, that will always be John L. Smith.
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