[stextbox id=”custom”]
Renee Gord, a reporter at radio station KAKS, has been fired after wearing a University of Florida hat to a news conference called by Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino. KAKS is a northwest Arkansas radio station that calls itself Hog Sports Radio.
The Associated Press reported that Petrino commented on Gork’s hat after answering a question she asked. “And that will be the last question I answer with that hat on,” Petrino said.  More details here.
Moral: Think twice about which school logos you wear where.
[/stextbox]
Love it!!
As I recall, at the very first presser that Petrino held at Arkansas, a cameraman/reporter showed up in a UK shirt and was called out by Petrino.
I’m certainly not defending Petrino but when he called out this woman, she should have simply removed the hat and said…”oops, sorry coach, won’t happen again.” Instead she waited two days, was canned and THEN said she was GOING to apologize.
If this gal hasn’t learned Petrino’s personality by now, she really isn’t serious about a career as sports reporter. She’s rude, a smart aleck and she got caught.
Two thoughts come to mind:
1) I can guarantee that Bobby wouldn’t be so offended by someone in a Gators hat if UF had an open head coaching position and they were approaching him with the intention of offering him the position. Last year when Urban Meyer resigned for like 36 hours I got a chuckle imagining Bobby blowing up his agent’s phone to get his name thrown in the ring for the UF job.
2) I used to think that it was a joke that we had a local radio station named after the hometown team that frequently had a creepy blogger from the in-state rival as a frequent guest and guest host. After hearing of this episode it kind of changes my mind on that. It makes you look pretty insecure not allowing any presence or mention of a rival.
I know that Bobby Petrino can be a jerk, but in this instance I think he was justified in objecting to the Gators hat. Perhaps the reporter shouldn’t have been fired, but wearing the hat seems, at best, to have been a dumb thing to do. After all, she did work for Hog Sports Radio. Wearing the hat of an opponent to such a press conference seems like an intentional slap in the face to me. I wonder how we would react if Paul Rogers or Drew Deener showed up to a Charlie Strong press conference decked out in UK gear.
Defending Petrino doesn’t come easily for me. But your analogy of one of our broadcasters showing up at a Strong presser in UK gear is spot on.
And we need to remember no matter how much pressure Bobby “I’ve never met a commitment I won’t break” Petrino may have put on the station he wasn’t the one who fired her.
She might as well have run up to the speaker’s platform and stuck a pin in his eye. She knew what she was doing (forget the “Oh, it was raining and I just grabbed the first hat I could find” excuse). And she made a big mistake.
Does she deserve to be fired? My answer is not necessarily but I sure can’t find fault with it.
Aw, forgive him for apparently reacting so harshly to this unintended insult. After all, he’s a young coach!
It is interesting that he benefitted from our tolerance of his courting other schools’ offers while he served here, yet he apparently invoked the zero-tolerance approach for such a minor infraction there.