When a college football program experiences a steep decline in meeting expectations, the first remedy is for the HC to make staff changes on either the Offensive side, the Defensive side or Special teams. Herein lies the problem ............ CBP would be forced to terminate the very same family members that he hired. Frankly, I do not see Bobby voluntarily exercising that option, and it appears that he has already started (last night comments to the press) to establish protective cover for those staffers by stating that he alone is responsible for these disappointing performances. While that is obviously the most appropriate thing for any HC to say, it does not account for the poor judgement that Petrino made by loading up his family as assistant coaches when clearly they lacked sufficient experience, and assuming sole responsibility does not go anywhere close to resolving the problem. Ironically the only Petrino who possessed the required experience to coach at this level is Paul, who no longer has any association with Bobby’s staff.
CardsDan repeated an observation to me that his nephew Kyle Bolin had shared several years ago just prior to his transfer to Rutgers ........... specifically that Nick Petrino was more of a distraction to the offense and the team, than providing any positive contribution. Kyle has too much character to go much beyond that, but I interpreted his observations that staff morale was affected negatively and that it was contagious to some of the players. In hindsight, I can now see that Lamar pretty much delivered 3 years of an amazing individual performance that concealed a program that was dealing with internal strife. Grantham’s departure was a huge signal of a serious leadership problem, and trading him for Sirmon was predictably a failed decision.
VT is faced with a huge and unenviable task ............ convincing CBP to either make those staffing changes at the end of this season, or resign. I understand the financial consequences associated with any sort of a CBP buyout, but any other alternative would not only result in greater long term expense, it could jeopardize the decades of progress and momentum that UL football has built up to this time.
