Idaho Coach Paul Petrino reportedly needed to be restrained from media at practice

Paul Petrino is tired of all the negative press he thinks his Idaho football team has been getting.

Sure hope he’s stayed away from social media on Thursday.

A column by Moscow-Pullman Daily News sports editor Michael-Shawn Dugar has been making the rounds, and it paints a less-than-flattering picture of the coach.

In the piece, Dugar claims that he and a reporter from another newspaper were verbally attacked by Petrino after practice Wednesday, with the coach eventually needing to be restrained by an assistant.

“He was very much upset,” Dugar wrote of Petrino, the younger brother of Louisville Coach Bobby Petrino. “He went on to immediately ban the media from today’s practice, yelling, ‘If all you’re going to write is negative (expletive) then none of you need to be here!’ ”

At one point, Dugar said, Petrino “started to move toward me, still angrily shouting expletives about my writing and my professionalism while being physically restrained by one of his assistants, approaching me as if he had plans to do something other than verbally express his concerns.”

It’s worth noting that Petrino is in a high-stress position, having gone 2-21 in his two seasons with the Vandals. Also, this account comes from one person, someone who just happens to have a large platform from which to tell his side of the story.

It will be interesting to see if and how Petrino responds.