Good for Arkansas’ Bobby

Petrino voting against a

since-nixed proposal for college football to have an early signing period in recruiting as other college sports do. It should be the other way around. Those other sports, especially basketball and baseball, ought to be nixing their early signing periods, not football embracing one. Ignoring the early signing’s role in college basketball’s wellchronicled problems with some AAU coaches seems like ignoring an elephant in the room. High school basketball coaches, not AAU coaches, were the college coaches’ coaching conduit to recruits before the early signing period was installed.

Then everything changed. Now, it seems the vast majority of bigtime Division I basketball recruits are signed, sealed and delivered in November before their high school senior hoops season tips off.

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So it’s the AAU coach of summer ball that the college coaches talk to most.

This isn’t to say all high school coaches are saints and all AAU coaches are sleazeballs.

Every profession, and high school coaching is a profession, has some clinkers. And some AAU coaches are wonderful coaches and wonderful human beings.

But if betting percentages on who is more apt to be looking out for a kid and who would be more apt act like an exploiting agent, the high school coach seems the more likely favorable alternative.

It would seem the time is ripe to ease the brake pedal on the mad pace of big-time college recruiting rather than step on the madness accelerator. By the way, does any college sport’s early-signing period make less sense than baseball’s ? You can sign a prospect in November and babysit him through the pro draft in June and beyond and still lose him to the pros if he signs before classes begin in August. That’s a lot of time and expense lost for a scholarship-starved, and at many schools underfunded, sport.

Mourning Allen Petray Razorbacks who played football for Frank Broyles from 1972-75 will mourn the recent passing of Allen Petray. The Malvern native wasn’t a great football player, but he was good enough to be a three-year letterman starting at offensive guard as a true sophomore in the 1973 season-opener against Southern California and to be the backup center to Richard LaFargue on the 1975 Southwest Conference championship team that went 10-2 and beat Georgia in the Cotton Bowl.

And he was good enough that upon running into Broyles as a student finishing up his degree in 1976 while R. C. Thieleman had moved from guard to center, Petray recalled Broyles saying, “ Allen, I wish I had redshirted you and kept R. C. at guard. ”

Or maybe that was Allen Petray saying that as Frank Broyles.

It was always hard to hear the difference.

For what his teammates will most remember about Allen Petray was his remarkable ability to mimic his coach.

The Georgia accent, the gestures, the wording and expressions, from the enthusiastic to the exasperated — Petray had Frank down pat.

Allen always was “ Frank” for the springtime skits the players performed and he would ham it up some as “ Frank ” to media, too.

One of his best, with, if memory serves, team manager Luigi Vigiletti portraying trusted Broyles aide Lon Farrell, had Petray’s “ Frank ” addressing the team at the blackboard.

“ Even more than you love winning, ” the Petray Frank would bellow by the board scribbling, “ you’ve got to DESPISE losing !”

The scribbling stopped at “ got to. ”

“ Lon ! How do you spell despise ?”

Petray’s parody was so effective it never failed for me to think of Allen each time Broyles took to the airwaves as ABC’s No. 1 colorman for college football.

Nate Allen covers University of Arkansas athletics for the Northwest Arkansas Times.