Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where Indiana authored a bad beat so shocking that the quarterback apologized to the bettors. Second Quarter: Are We Really Doing This Again? Third Quarter: The Looming Notre Dame Argument. Fourth Quarter: October Bold Predictions.
First Quarter: Here He Comes Again, Somehow
Sam Pittman (1) is out at Arkansas, a lamentable but inevitable result for a nice guy who—like Brent Pry at Virginia Tech—probably should have been fired last year to give the 2025 team a fighting chance. When you finally get Notre Dame (2) on campus for the first time and your team is being pummeled so badly that the stadium is half empty at halftime, it’s over.
The more interesting news Sunday is that the interim coach of the Razorbacks is the disingenuous drifter himself, Bobby Petrino (3). What a sport.
That choice launches Arkansas to damn near the top of the Shameless Power Ratings in the most shameless conference in America, the SEC. Auburn (4) is the forever leader of the Shameless Power Ratings, having earned the spot several scandals ago and strengthened its iron grip when it hired Hugh Freeze. But Arkansas vaults to a strong second, moving past Tennessee (5)—which enabled a coup that brought together the power duo of Phil Fulmer as athletic director and Jeremy Pruitt as Bag Man in Charge—and other SEC athletic departments.
The Arkansas leadership has, it appears, gone whole Hog on forgiveness. Or desperation.
For those who don’t recall the last time Petrino was the head football coach at the school, a brief refresher course: He was fired in 2012, before the neck collar was off and road rash had healed from the most infamous Harley-Davidson crash in college football history. The aftermath of the crash revealed a few problematic facts that Petrino omitted—he was accompanied on the Harley ride by a former Arkansas volleyball player who was more than just along for the ride, let’s say. Petrino had hired her as the program’s player development coordinator, and given her a $20,000 gift.
In theory, a coach who brought that kind of embarrassment to a university would be unlikely to return there in an official capacity. But this is SEC football, where all manner of things can be excused or brushed aside if you really need to move the football. So Easy Rider came back to Arkansas as Pittman’s offensive coordinator after the 2023 season, tasked with doing his part to save Sam’s job.
Bobby Petrino is once again head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.
— CFBSelect.com (@CfbSelect) September 28, 2025
Who was watching College Football during this moment? 👇 pic.twitter.com/BBNV4Og4DE
That lasted for 18 games. Let the record show that Petrino did his job, pumping up the Hogs’ points per game from 26.6 before he arrived in 2023 to 30.9 last season and 37.4 thus far this year. The man has always known how to score.
It also put him on the vulture’s perch for exactly this moment, when Pittman would fall and Petrino could swoop in to pick at the carcass. Arkansas fans fondly remembered the pre-Harley crash days with Petrino, when the Hogs went 34–17 and finished No. 5 in the country in his last season. Many of them were happy to see him back, anticipating the day when he could take charge again.
It’s not like Petrino would ever undercut a boss, current or former. His first whiff of scandal came in 2003, late in his first season as a head coach at Louisville, when he clandestinely met with Auburn administrators and boosters across the Ohio River from Louisville as they laid plans to fire future U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville. Tubs had employed Petrino as offensive coordinator the previous year.
When that scheme was exposed, Tuberville kept his job at Auburn and Petrino sheepishly pledged renewed allegiance to the Cardinals. That lasted about a year, until he tried to get the LSU job while leading Louisville to an 11–1 season and Top 10 ranking. LSU hired Les Miles instead, and Petrino stayed two more years at Louisville before bolting for the NFL and the Atlanta Falcons.
Thirteen games into his first season there, Petrino bailed for Arkansas, signing off with a four-sentence, laminated note that was left in the lockers of each player. Yet even after the Great Fayetteville Crash, Petrino got more chances. Western Kentucky hired him, where he stayed for one season before doing Bobby 2.0 in Louisville. The school was mocked for rehiring him, but Petrino did deliver Lamar Jackson and a Heisman Trophy season in 2016 before completely losing the program and being fired late in what would be a 2–10 season in ’18.
Still, more chances awaited. He was hired at FCS program Missouri State, staying three seasons while trying to get several other jobs. Eventually he landed as offensive coordinator at UNLV for a few weeks with Barry Odom before the Bobby 2.0, The Ozarks Version, came to pass.
Now he’s back in a head-coaching position for the seventh time. Almost all of the first six ended badly, but who’s counting? And at every stop except the Falcons, there were good times before the bad times. So maybe Petrino and his very talented quarterback, Taylen Green (6), can win some games over the next two months.
Does he want the full-time job, you ask? Do sharks want to eat seals?
So we’ll see how it goes with five currently ranked opponents still on the schedule: Tennessee, Texas A&M, LSU, Texas and Missouri. But the problem with the current Arkansas team is defense, not offense, which largely falls outside Petrino’s skill set.
If Arkansas decides it only wants a short-term hook-up with its old flame, The Dash does have another option.
The Dabo Swinney Relocation Plan
In April 2024, Arkansas made a big move by hiring a national championship men’s basketball coach who had lost his magic after more than a decade on the job—John Calipari (7) fled Kentucky for a needed reboot with the Razorbacks. His first regular season was a bit of a mess, but he got the team going at the end and then advanced to the NCAA tournament Sweet 16.
If the Hogs want to go to the same playbook, they should make a run at Dabo Swinney (8). The long-running romance between Swinney and Clemson, which resulted in two national championships and seven College Football Playoff appearances, is on the rocks. If he needs a change of atmosphere and a fresh challenge, there is a lot of chicken money and Walmart dough in Northwest Arkansas. Just sayin’.
The more popular and conventional name for the job is SMU’s Rhett Lashlee (9), who would probably work but also has echoes of a hire that went very badly for Arkansas. The coaching line went from Bret Bielema to Chad Morris, whose previous college head-coaching experience had come at SMU. But Morris was only moderately successful with the Mustangs, whereas Lashlee has been a big winner.
For pure comedy, hire Petrino. For a sense of adventure, take a big swing at Swinney. For the hire that makes the most sense, try to lure Lashlee (though he has a pretty good thing going at SMU and in the ACC, where the path to the playoff is easier).
Dash Playoff Bracket
Good news: Everyone has finally played someone, in terms of at least one legitimate opponent. So The Dash Bracket can reflect that, and it starts with a new No. 1 in Oregon (10) after the Ducks stood tall in Happy Valley to defeat Penn State.
Seeding
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Miami
- Oklahoma
- Ole Miss
- Indiana
- Penn State
- Texas A&M
- Vanderbilt
- Texas Tech
- Alabama
- Memphis
First-round matchups
- No. 12 Memphis at No. 5 Ole Miss
- No. 11 Alabama at No. 6 Indiana
- No. 10 Texas Tech at No. 7 Penn State
- No. 9 Vanderbilt at No. 8 Texas A&M
Quarterfinals
- Sugar Bowl: No. 4 Oklahoma vs. winner of No. 12 Memphis–No. 5 Ole Miss winner
- Orange Bowl: No. 3 Miami vs. winner of No. 11 Alabama–No. 6 Indiana
- Cotton Bowl: No. 2 Ohio State vs. winner of No. 10 Texas Tech–No. 7 Penn State
- Rose Bowl: No. 1 Oregon vs. winner of No. 9 Vanderbilt–No. 8 Texas A&M
Also considered: Georgia Tech, Georgia, Iowa State, Missouri, Texas, Notre Dame, BYU, Tulane, Maryland, Michigan, LSU.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Forde-Yard Dash: Arkansas’s Shameless Bobby Petrino Rebound Likely to Have Same Result.
