Louisville coach Bobby Petrino has been banned from recruiting at a South Carolina high school because the Cardinals pulled a scholarship offer from a player at the school late in the recruiting process.
Irmo (S.C.) Dutch Fork running back Matt Colburn committed to Louisville last summer, but the school pulled his offer on Monday -- two days before National Signing Day.
"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," Dutch Fork coach Tom Knotts told The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C.
Knotts told the newspaper that Louisville inside linebacker coach Tony Grantham's excuse was that the Cardinals had three defensive backs leave early for the NFL and they needed Colburn's spot to add a defensive back. "They've known about these three DBs wanting to go to the NFL for weeks now," Knotts told The State. "To use that as an excuse doesn't hold water with me."
247sports.com reported that Colburn was offered a "grayshirt" opportunity -- he could attend Louisville in the fall semester, paying his own way, then would receive a scholarship for next spring -- but he declined. He did not sign Wednesday and reportedly is considering Georgia Southern, Marshall, Wake forest and FCS school Furman.
It's definitely bad PR for Petrino -- who definitely is no stranger to bad PR -- and for Louisville. At the same time, being "banned" from recruiting at one high school in South Carolina is not going to hurt Louisville's recruiting ability; the Cardinals had just two South Carolina natives on their roster in 2014, and those two rarely played. In addition, Colburn was not a celebrated recruit: While he was considered a top-25 recruit in South Carolina, he was not even a top-1,000 recruit nationally. Pulling an offer from a top-100 or -250 player is not something Louisville would have done.
One thing to watch: Wake Forest is in the ACC's Atlantic Division, just like Louisville. Thus, signing with Wake would give Colburn numerous opportunities to prove Petrino and Louisville wrong.
Mike Huguenin can be reached at mike.huguenin@nfl.com. You also can follow him on Twitter @MikeHuguenin.
