Bobby Petrino has been banned from recruiting at a South Carolina high school after his Louisville program screwed over a 3-star recruit who had been committed to the college for several months.
Dutch Fork High School star running back Matt Colburn (pictured at top in No. 31 jersey with Petrino) had been committed to Louisville since June but received a phone call Monday from Cardinals defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, who said they could no longer honor the athlete’s letter of intent. The reason given is that Louisville needs the scholarship for defensive backs after they had more leave for the NFL than expected. Louisville proposed to have Colburn grey shirt, which means he would only be able to enroll in January.
Colburn’s high school coach is understandably upset about what happened.
“Louisville is only going to hurt themselves doing this. Everybody knows not just what a good player Matt is but what a good person he is. That is not the way to do business and if that’s the way to do business we don’t want to deal with them,” Dutch Fork coach Tom Knotts said in response to what happened.
“He (Petrino) won’t be able to recruit my school anymore and I imagine there will be some other coaches that will say the same thing. Trust factor is just not there. They’ve known about these three DBs wanting to go to the NFL for weeks now. To use that as an excuse doesn’t hold water with me.”
Colburn’s coaches have been left scrambling to try to find a home for the three-star running back. They say he has an offer from Navy and several FCS schools, which is pretty nice considering they shut down his recruiting months ago.
This is a really unfortunate situation, though it’s not unusual. We’ve seen this sort of thing happen for years. Coaches are really in control and can play as many games as they want. The only question is whether the move will eventually backfire.
Photo: Matthew Colburn on Twitter
