Oh what a tangled web

OK, here we go.  From the wires of the Associated Press:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Bobby Petrino's image of perfection has come to a sudden and surprising end at Arkansas.

The Razorbacks coach was put on paid administrative leave Thursday night less than seven hours after his boss, athletic director Jeff Long, learned Petrino had failed to disclose he had been riding with a female employee half his age when his motorcycle skidded off the road over the weekend.

Petrino said he had been concerned about protecting his family and keeping an "inappropriate relationship from becoming public."

It was a stunning revelation for a highly successful coach who prides himself on complete control and intense privacy in his personal life. Petrino will now wait out his fate while Long conducts a review.

"I will fully cooperate with the university throughout this process and my hope is to repair my relationships with my family, my athletic director, the Razorback Nation and remain the head coach of the Razorbacks," he said in a statement issued by the university.

Long announced the decision to put Petrino on leave at a late-night news conference, one that was reminiscent of when the former Atlanta Falcons coach was hired by the Razorbacks on Dec. 11, 2007. Long said he had no timeline in determining Petrino's future with the Razorbacks.

In other words: blustery football coach is caught with his hands in the nookie jar, and now he hopes to repair his relationships with his wife, his kids, his supervisors, and anyone else who might raise an opprobrious eyebrow at a man caught lying about being with a woman less than 1/2 his age (I did the math.)

Yeah, she looks right for him

He's described as an experienced motorcycle rider, but the state police blame the wreck, which left the coach with four broken ribs, a cracked neck vertebra, and what's sure to be a really angry wife, on "sun" and "wind."  Whatever it was that he told the wife he was going to do on Saturday, he seems to have forgotten to mention his friend Jessica Dorrell, a former volleyball player at the university who - how about this? - just got hired on Mar. 28 as an employee of the football program.

How convenient!

Look, Petrino is not the first man entering middle age to find the need to make an ass of himself over a young woman, so he treats her to an afternoon of maladroit motorcycling and goes flying off the road.  When he spun the yarn for his bosses and the police, he said there was no other person involved, and that a woman had happened to come along to wave down a passing vehicle for help.

He didn't mention that she happened to come along because she had just been on the motorcycle with him.

For all we know, they are just friends; he and his wife like the young lady and welcome her to the U of Arkansas athletic department, and look forward to many more nights of fun together making fudge, popping corn, and playing Sorry!

Tell the truth and it will set you free, coach.