Dang it, couldn't resist. I was gonna wait until the staff was finalized.
So like, the big fear was bigger than Petersen, it was the idea that Petersen meant Bielema was struggling to hire quality people, and particularly quality people with experience working with him. Because that's the fear with Bielema, the negative reading of his resume, that he kinda showed himself to be a clown at Arkansas and isn't to be trusted outside of the very pre-structured setup in place at Wisconsin. Petersen was a red flashing light in that regard.
The hires made since make crystal clear that that fear was wrong, full stop. The rest of the staff is really good, worth the money we're spending, and has a number of people with a lot of credibility and capital eagerly returning to Bielema's side after having played or coached for him. We hired Bielema in large part because of the opportunity and ability to bring in this kind of staff (though I am still looking for a couple of solid gold recruiters in the last two spots. I'd rather not Bellamy at WR but I'll live if that does end up being the case).
But the Petersen thing remains what it is. That's probably the most important spot on the staff, and we filled it with a totally baffling and shaky choice. Still, with the benefit of hindsight and context, clearly Bielema didn't just scrape him off the bottom of the barrel, that's the guy he wanted, for whatever reason. And Bret Bielema has forgotten more about football than I will ever know. So what can you do but hope for the best, hope it works, and hope that if it doesn't, the very competitive salary we have allotted to Petersen can quickly and easily be transferred to someone better.
My expectation is that it won't work and we'll have a new OC before long. But far stranger things have happened.