Word to the wise Idaho beat writers: Don’t criticize Paul Petrino’s offense.
Recently the Idaho head coach absolutely went OFF on some reporters after they criticized the offense. It apparently got so bad that Petrino had to be restrained by one of his assistants.
Here are the details from Deadspin:
At the end of Wednesday’s practice, Petrino turned to the sideline and asked me and a reporter from the Lewiston Tribune, “Did you guys see enough deep balls today?” He was referring to my story in Wednesday’s paper discussing the team’s work-in-progress vertical passing attack.
I thought he was being sarcastic, so I responded accordingly.
“A couple,” I replied.
“Yeah, there were a bunch,” the other reporter answered.
Petrino wasn’t just sarcastic; he was very much upset. He went on to immediately ban the media from today’s practice, yelling, “If all you’re going to write is negative (expletive) then none of you need to be here!”
I dismissed it as a lack of awareness, perhaps not realizing that while we were in fact on the football field, neither I nor the Tribune writer were his players, and we don’t respond to being spoken to that way.
But moments later, Petrino walked up to me and the Tribune reporter just outside the practice field and began to scream in my face, loudly informing us how many deep balls the team completed Wednesday. He then went on to chide us for our inaccurate criticisms of quarterback Matt Linehan and our lack of football knowledge, walking away saying, “You don’t even know what the (expletive) you’re talking about! Do your (expletive) job!”
According to Dugar, Petrino had to be restrained by one of his assistants. Well, at least he’s still emotionally invested in a program that went 1-10 last season.
Yikes, that wasn’t very pretty at all. Coach Petrino has to do a better job of not reacting to the trolls like that. While I understand him being upset about a reporter saying such a thing about his team, you can’t ever go after a reporter like that.
At the end of the day it only makes things worse, because the writer isn’t going to stop poking the beast. I bet this won’t be the last time these two have a little dust up over something written.