Why Bobby Petrino said it was time for him to leave Missouri State football
Former Missouri State head football coach Bobby Petrino recently spoke about his departure from Missouri State and his reasoning to take an offensive coordinator job at UNLV before quickly taking the same position at Texas A&M.
Petrino, who coached the Bears for three seasons, met with reporters covering Texas A&M for the first time on Sunday during the Aggies' annual fall camp media day.
Petrino was announced as UNLV's offensive coordinator on Dec. 15. A day later, Missouri State promoted defensive coordinator Ryan Beard, Petrino's son-in-law, to head coach. Petrino left his post at UNLV in early January to join Jimbo Fisher's staff at Texas A&M.
Reporters asked Petrino why he jumped at the different opportunities while touching on why he left Missouri State.
"When I was coaching at Missouri State, I was having a great time," Petrino told reporters. "One of my goals there was to mentor and raise young coaches. That was a lot of fun but I always had an itch to get back (to the SEC) and be able to coach at this level. It's been a lot of fun."
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Petrino went 18-15 at Missouri State and led it to its first two postseason appearances since 1990 during his first two seasons. The Bears went 5-6 in 2022 when the team was labeled as a national championship contender entering the year.
Missouri State was Petrino's first head coaching stop since he was fired from Louisville 10 games into the 2018 season. His job at Texas A&M will be his first offensive coordinator gig since he held the same position at Auburn in 2002. He was hired for his first head coaching stint at Louisville after one year.
Petrino's return to the SEC is his first since he was the head coach at Arkansas from 2008-11, which ended in scandal. Initially, Petrino wasn't going to Texas A&M as he was signed on to coach alongside former Mizzou head coach and first-year UNLV head coach Barry Odom in the Mountain West.
Petrino said he interviewed with Texas A&M before taking the UNLV job, while he was still the head coach at Missouri State. He said Fisher is one who wants to take his time doing research on his coaching candidates and was in the middle of a recruiting cycle at the same time.
"And then Barry gave me a call and it was a situation where the young guys that I was trying to help raise in this profession at Missouri State, I felt they were ready to be on their own," Petrino said. "'Go do what you do. Take it over and see how good you are.' I had the plans that I was going to go get a really good assistant job, get in the room with the quarterbacks and kind of go to how I grew up so I went with Barry down there."
A few weeks later, Petrino received a call from Texas A&M offering him its offensive coordinator position to which Petrino said he replied, "Are you kidding me?" while noting it wasn't a hard decision.
Beard and Nick Petrino, Bobby Petrino's son and Missouri State's current offensive coordinator, have said in recent days that they stay in coach with their former boss — talking life and sharing different offensive and defensive concepts. Nick Petrino said he talks to his father daily.
Beard will make his head coaching debut on Sept. 1 when the Bears travel to play at Kansas. Bobby Petrino will make his debut with Texas A&M at home on Sept. 2 against New Mexico.
Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist with the Springfield News-Leader. You can contact him at 417-371-6987, by email at wwheeler@news-leader.com or Twitter at @WyattWheeler_NL.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Bobby Petrino: Texas A&M offensive coordinator on Missouri State
