It can't just be about football with the Vandals.
Ohio hasn’t been immune to questions leading up to their first game of the season against Idaho, but at least those controversies involve on-field subjects — and have been mostly solved in the week before they make the flight to Moscow.
Idaho, meanwhile, is in a messy situation as its players try to prepare for game day.
The Vandals, a Sun Belt team who have won just two games in the past two seasons and have made just one bowl game appearance since 1998, aren’t a program that basks in the national spotlight often. Recently, however, they’ve been attracting the spotlight more often than not, and for all the wrong reasons.
It actually began two weeks ago, when coach Paul Petrino went bonkers on a reporter for making a harmlessly, mild critique of his passing offense. And when we say bonkers, that doesn’t simply mean he called a reporter out in a press conference. It means he had to be physically restrained from attacking a media member.
Somehow, it gets worse from there. Last Wednesday, a story broke about a trio of Idaho football players getting caught on video stealing $400 worth of clothing from a university store. That’s an embarrassing situation for any program to endure, but a relatively mild issue. Heck, Ohio saw one of its players get into some mild trouble with the law this offseason.
The really embarrassing part was what happened next. The store owner called police, who instructed football graduate assistants to contact their superiors so that someone could come and identify the burglars. Shortly after several members of the coaching staff watched the video, Petrino marched into the store with the stolen merchandise in hand, intending to return it and have a conversation with the store owner.
When police later followed up with the store owner, he said he “did not recall” the names of the burglars that the coaches had provided, and wouldn’t pursue charges. The University of Idaho echoed the store owner later, saying that it would not issue its own discipline of the players, and insisted it “would have taken the same action against any other student(s).”
Arguably the most troubling headline to come out in the last week came Tuesday, however, as Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson could not guarantee Idaho’s future in the league in a teleconference. Idaho, along with New Mexico State, exists in the Sun Belt as a football-only member, and signed a four-year contract in 2013 that made them eligible for an extension after two seasons.
Those two seasons will be up in January, when Benson says the league will vote on whether to keep the two football-only programs around.
In late March, Idaho Athletic Director Rob Spear told The Idaho Statesman that “all indications” were that Idaho would get an extension. That could change, however, if the NCAA shrinks its requirement that a conference include 12 teams in order to hold a championship game. If the Sun Belt can be allowed to hold its title game while only hosting ten teams, that could spell trouble for Idaho and New Mexico State.
Ohio will enter their season-opening showdown coming off its first season in six years in which it didn’t play in a bowl game, and is in the midst of continuing to evaluate its quarterback options on a week-to-week basis.
The team the Bobcats visit, meanwhile, will come into the game with zero favor in their surrounding media outlets, a coach who’s been exposed as being unnecessarily violent with the press and willing to dig his own players out of legal trouble, and the future of their program hanging high in the air.
So, you know, it could be worse.
@_tonywolfe_
