JetGate changed future of Louisville, Auburn

Saturday's season opener has so many juicy story lines that it almost feels like a movie script.

Bobby Petrino, now coaching Louisville football for the second time in his career, is returning to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, where he coached the Falcons for 13 games and abruptly left to return to college football. He infamously informed his players of his departure with laminated notes in their locker stalls, leaving for Arkansas in the middle of the week and infuriating Falcons players, coaches and staffers.

And to add to that, Petrino's U of L team is taking on Auburn, the first program on a list of places Petrino flirted with while he was still coaching Louisville in his first stint back in the mid-2000s. Auburn, after a disappointing 2003 season, attempted to hold a covert meeting with Petrino about replacing coach Tommy Tuberville, one of Petrino's friends and mentors. But after news of the rendezvous leaked and Petrino denied the meeting to The Courier-Journal, Auburn came clean about everything. Petrino eventually did, too.

If Louisville didn’t have one more game that season, former Courier-Journal writer Pat Forde said, Auburn would've hired Petrino "before Thanksgiving."

"It would've changed Louisville. It would've changed Auburn," said Forde, who, along with the C-J's Eric Crawford, broke the secret meeting story with the Montgomery Advertiser’s Jay Tate.

"I don't think Auburn's (undefeated) 2004 season would've been as good with Petrino. Starting over with a different coaching staff would've inhibited that team's progression. If Louisville only has Bobby Petrino one year the first time around, that holds them back. Maybe they don't go to that Orange Bowl (after the 2006 season). Maybe they don't have Michael Bush and Brian Brohm. Eventually they might not have even be in the ACC."

Tuberville, Tate said, "got the stay of execution, so to speak. They had to leave him alone for a while … (2004) turned out to be one of the great seasons in Auburn history."

Twelve years later, Petrino is at a different stage of his career. He was considered a potential candidate to replace Gene Chizik at Auburn after the 2012 season, but Auburn hired Gus Malzahn. After a season at Western Kentucky, Petrino came back to Louisville.

By all accounts, Petrino seems happy at U of L, grateful for a second chance with the Cardinals. Save a few small missteps -- namely a mini-controversy in February around the last-minute changing of a full scholarship offer to an already committed recruit -- Petrino has had a relatively quiet, businesslike return to his former job.

Louisville won nine games in its maiden ACC season, and is in position in 2015 to challenge Clemson and Florida State for an Atlantic Division title. The university last week announced its plans to expand Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, and the Cards have more high-profile season openers planned for the future.

All that is probably why Petrino waved off questions on Wednesday about the Auburn fiasco, which was dubbed "JetGate," or his time with the Falcons.

He coached WKU to a 2013 win at Georgia State, so Saturday’s game is not his first time returning to the Dome. And he coached Arkansas against Auburn four times in four years, with stories about the 2003 saga regularly popping up.

"You know, that was such a long time ago, I haven't even thought about it," Petrino said on the ACC coaches teleconference, responding to a question about returning to Atlanta. "I'm just very happy to be the head coach here at the University of Louisville and excited for what we’ve got going here, looking forward to this game on Saturday."

The lead producer for CBS, which will carry the national broadcast of the 3:30 p.m. game, said they'll weave Petrino's coaching story line in throughout the call on Saturday, but it won't be a focal point.

In-studio analyst Rick Neuheisel, no stranger to controversy himself as the former head coach at Colorado, UCLA and Washington, thinks Petrino's history in Atlanta or with Auburn "makes for interesting conversation."

"But when they kick it off, it's going to be fascinating to watch the teams play," he said. "I wasn't surprised at all when Nick Saban left (the Miami Dolphins) to go back to Alabama. Those things don't surprise me. ... Both for Nick and Bobby, they felt more at home in the college environment."

At his introductory press conference in January 2014, Petrino used the same phrasing, calling Louisville his family's home. He acknowledged past mistakes – "my first mistake was ever leaving the University of Louisville," he said – and hoped that U of L fans would forgive him.

Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich, at that same press conference, said he told Petrino he was still mad at him when they first got together to talk about replacing Charlie Strong, who left to coach Texas. But when Petrino’s wife insisted that her husband had changed, Jurich had heard all he needed.

"I pared my list down to seven people. As I kept going through it in much more detail, it kept leading me back to Bobby Petrino," Jurich said that day.

He later added, "I told him, 'If you lie to me, I'll kill you.'"

To U of L, the potential positives of bringing back Petrino far outweighed the negatives. Louisville won 41 games in four years with Petrino at the helm. Forde, who now writes for Yahoo! Sports, counts the Petrino era among three or four landmark things that have happened in Louisville football's century-long history.

"My sense is that he is not the same guy he was in 2003 or 2004 when he was trying to get (jobs at) Ole Miss, LSU, Notre Dame -- that was the thing that angered a lot of Louisville fans," Forde said. "The Auburn flirtation was just the first of many. He couldn't wait to get out of there. But I think he's pretty darn happy to be in Louisville. It's a better job (now) ... That's the irony of it."

Tuberville is entering his third season at Cincinnati after a three-year run with Texas Tech. And Petrino is back in Louisville, preparing to lead his team on the field in what is one of the Cards' biggest games in recent memory.

A Cincinnati spokesman did not respond to requests from The Courier-Journal for an interview with Tuberville, but the coach talked about the 2003 controversy with the Alabama Media Group, saying it was a "hard week."

"I told (Petrino) there's nothing I can tell you or you can tell me that is going to make this any better," Tuberville said. "I just wish you would have called and told me once they contacted you."

Malzahn has won 20 games in two years at Auburn, and the Tigers won a national title after the 2010 season with Chizik. Atlanta has moved on from that period in its franchise history. Michael Vick is long gone, and the Falcons have rebuilt around quarterback Matt Ryan.

There might be history between Petrino and Auburn and Petrino and Atlanta, but that’s all it is now to him. History.

"Like I said, this is all about the University of Louisville," he said, "and our game coming up Saturday."

Follow U of L writer Jeff Greer on Twitter (@jeffgreer_cj) for regular Cards updates.