Ugh.

When we hired Bobby Petrino (I say “we” because I am, after all, a Falcons fan; one of the very few left), I had my reservations. I didn’t like that he was coming from college after Nick Saban had just left. To me, Saban was a better coach, and if he couldn’t make it in the NFL, who was to say that Petrino could make it?

Well, 13 weeks later and we got our answer. Petrino dipped less than 24 hours after his nationally televised game on Monday Night Football, a night in which his owner said, “I have more faith in Bobby right now than I did when I hired him.”

With their search currently going on, you’d think Atlanta would smarten up and not take a college guy. They haven’t. Pete Carroll, the great recruiter whose coaching I have to question, interviewed via phone today with Arthur Blank and the Falcons and — obviously not up to sync with Michael Vick’s imprisonment and the team’s aging roster — is actually interested. The story:

Blank, who has also been searching for a general mangager, was expected to offer full control of personnel decisions to Carroll, and the sources said that is what intrigues Carroll most. The coach is currently on vacation in Hawaii.

Carroll spoke with USC sports information director Tim Tessalone on Wednesday and reiterated the he “understands that his name is going to come up for NFL jobs, as it has in each of his past years here, but that he was not going to comment about NFL openings because it would just lead to speculation.”

To make the news even more wonderful to me, they’re going to give him full personnel control, which means a backfield of Reggie Bush and John David Booty, with Dwayne Jarrett and Mike Williams catching everything. For your sake and ours, run, Carroll. Run.