Humor

Younger Petrino Back As Arkansas OC

Date: 2011-12-08T06:35:01.903
Author: Zach Turner
Editor note: He's back ... Paul Petrino ... makes a come back.
Number of Views: 357

The younger brother of Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino, Paul returns as the Razorbacks offensive coordinator after spending the last two seasons with the same title at Illinois. Petrino was the Hogs offensive coordinator during the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

“Over the last, you know, 5 days, I went and interviewed at a few different places, talked to a lot of different schools, and I was driving down the road back from an interview, it was about a 5 hour drive, and I really started thinking, ‘ you know what, I need to get back to where the head coach believes in everything I believe in,’” Paul said. “Where the head coach starts everything with discipline, where he believes in what I believe in offensively, and that’s really when it kind of came to me that this is probably where I needed to be.”

During his first stint as offensive coordinator at Arkansas, Paul didn’t get to call the plays, something he did do at Illinois where the Illini were ninth in the Big 10 conference in scoring and total offense.

“I am extremely thrilled to have Paul become a member of our staff again,” Bobby said. “Paul has had several options with high level programs the past few days and I’m excited he made the decision to rejoin our program. His experience the last two seasons, blended with our philosophy will give us continuity with our aggressive scheme.

Illinois began the year 6-0 and were ranked as high as No. 16 in the nation, but lost its last six games. Coach Ron Zook was fired last month after season seasons at the school.

In his first stint at Arkansas Paul was also the wide receivers coach in addition to offensive coordinator, but with the departure of Garrick McGee, Paul will assume the quarterback coach position this time around.

“I coached the receivers but I always worked with the quarterbacks,” Paul said. “If you guys ever remember coming to practice anytime we are in special teams, I was always working with them. I always went through the warm up progression. That the head coaches believed in from day one, because he taught me it.

I did it when I played for them. So I’ve coached the receivers, a lot of time that’s because the head coach is working with the quarterbacks also, but at some point in practice I’ve always worked with the quarterbacks. I’ve always met with them, I’ve always gone over a lot of game plan with them, and so I’m excited. I’m excited to get to working with Tyler and get this thing going.”

McGee, Arkansas’ offensive coordinator of the last two seasons, accepted the head coaching job at Alabama-Birmingham over the weekend and was officially introduced by the school on Monday.

Although Paul returns to the same position and still working under his brother Bobby, he said he had no hesitation coming back to the Razorbacks coaching staff.

“It kind of goes back to what I said earlier,” Paul said. “You know, with coaching at another school, and then interviewing at a couple of other schools, and just listening to how they did things, I wanted to get back and be at a school where they ran things from the top to the bottom what I believe in.

If I wasn’t going to be the head coach, I wanted to go to a school where the discipline, the day-to-day, how things are done, the belief in what we do on offense and defense, and probably more than anything the discipline, and just how the whole program was run, and I know how its ran here. And so that made no hesitation at all.”

UATrav sports writer Martha Swearingen contributed to this story.

###