Louisville Player Says Bobby Petrino's Trying To Control Where He Transfers

Louisville cornerback Shaq Wiggins is seeking a graduate transfer elsewhere for the 2017-18 season. Wiggins will be eligible to play for his new team immediately, since NCAA rules don’t force graduate transfers to sit out a year. However, head coach Bobby Petrino seems to be trying to restrict the options for Wiggins’s new destination.

Wiggins told ESPN today that Petrino is not going to allow his release if he elects to play for five specific schools: Kentucky, Mississippi State, Purdue, Notre Dame, or Western Kentucky. Louisville is scheduled to play Purdue and Kentucky next year, and it has WKU and Notre Dame on the docket in 2018 and 2019. Wiggins said he’s considering South Carolina and Tennessee for the moment, but he’d also strongly think about Mississippi State, if he were allowed to go.

Wiggins said Petrino probably won’t let him go to Mississippi State because former Louisville defensive coordinator Todd Grantham now works there in the same position. Terrell Buckley, MSU’s cornerbacks coach, was also a member of Petrino’s staff at Louisville. From ESPN:

“When [Petrino] said Mississippi State, I was like, it had to be deeper than what it seems to be because Louisville doesn’t play Mississippi State,” Wiggins said. “It just so happened to be Mississippi State on there, once Coach Grantham left.

“I really don’t know what’s his state of thinking or why he chose to put Mississippi State on there. It’s something personal, but I have no idea why. It’s really not fair.”

This is awfully rich behavior coming from Petrino, who secretly interviewed for the Auburn job during his first stint at Louisville, informed his players he was ditching the Falcons after one year by taping a note on their lockers, left Arkansas in shame after he lied about crashing his motorcycle while riding around with a team employee with whom he was having a secret tryst, and fled Western Kentucky after one season to come back to the Cardinals.