NCAA Football

Shocker: Bobby Petrino’s Mistress Is No Longer An Arkansas Employee

We still have a ways to go, but this is our current front-runner for “Most Inevitable Story of the Week”: Jessica Dorrell, the (engaged) woman with whom former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino cheated on his wife, got in a motorcycle accident with and lied about it, and also inappropriately hired to be part of his football program (oh, and gave $20,000 on top of all that), has resigned.

Dorrell was already placed on leave, and there really wasn’t any other way for this to end. Not only was Dorrell embroiled in a scandal that rocked her place of employment, but part of that scandal showed she didn’t even get her job fair and square to begin with. If the school was willing to part with Petrino – its most visible employee and a damn good football coach, all else aside – Dorrell, who wasn’t blameless in this saga, was as good as gone. Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long had this to say:

“While Ms. Dorrell had a legitimate right to apply for and accept a position within the football program, the circumstances surrounding the former coach’s decision to hire her compromised her ability to be effective in such a position. She and I believe she should have the opportunity to move on.”

So now she will – with $14,000 in hand as part of a settlement with the university. Not the worst way to end a professional relationship, considering all that’s gone down over the last couple weeks. The amount of sleaze oozing from this story (most of which is covered in links in the first paragraph of this post) was almost too surreal to comprehend, and despite us saying Petrino should keep his job, from a university perspective, Arkansas needed a clean, quick break from everyone involved in this sordid story. Of course, if this is how they wind up moving on, the jokes at the school’s expense are far from over.

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