I have been following Joey. . .while I am still not sure whether he can play quarterback in the NFL (is Miami any better without him?), the Falcons were not a good fit. It's probably the end of the line for Mr. Harrington.

College football coaches should never be hired into the NFL. That's all there is to it.

Fuckin' A. What else can happen to the Falcons this season?

(Just looked it up-- Petrino left the 3-10 Falcons, mid-season, to return to college).

I was wondering if it had all fallen apart so quickly for any other franchise... but how about the Dolphins? Ricky Williams' sudden retirement marked the beginning of the wheels falling off of a team that had been very good.

pokermonk, is it really that bad? Tom Coughlin, as an example, has been pretty successful.

The two biggest examples of coaches flopping after jumping straight from the college game to a head coaching position in the NFL that I can think of are Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban. Of course, Jimmy Johnson seemed to do all right, and his replacement Barry Switzer managed to keep a winning team winning. Lane Kiffin isn't re-writing any record books, but c'mon, he's coaching the Raiders. And Coughlin managed pretty well at Jacksonville. I'm sure I'm missing some, but overall it's not really common for a coach with no NFL assistant-coaching experience to be hired as a head coach.

If I'm an owner or GM, I just feel like the last thing I want is to throw money at a football factory head coach pining for his alma mater when I need him to be the cog in rebuilding my franchise. And that seems to be what's been going on as of late. Plus, the atmosphere of coaching contracts at the collegiate level (the nonsense with Les Miles is the latest case) gives you no sense of security. And considering the culture of collegiate football factories, there's no reason a coach wouldn't want to switch to a better team that can play against worser teams and still receive respect and even glory. Maybe it's very specifically tied to this era, but the college-to-pros flip has been a flop on the coaching level.

It's not that I don't have any sympathy for Petrino; it's that I don't think hiring him was wise in the first place.

What's interesting about the Dolphins is that it really seemed like they were recovering from the Ricky Williams loss and gaining momentum... and then Nick Saban left them for dead.

I was pissed off when the local nutjobs chased off Houston Nutt, he had done way better than our last few coaches and I did not expect we would get an even halfway decent coach... and then they go and hire Bobby freakin' Petrino.