THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016

Remember, it was only two years ago when the Vandal faithful wondered if Paul Petrino was the right football coach for the University of Idaho.

Two years, 12 wins and a bowl berth later, at least one other school is reportedly wondering if Petrino might be the right coach for that program.

Ironically, the school he has been linked to is Western Kentucky, where his brother, Bobby, coached for one year between the fiasco at Arkansas and his return to Louisville.

Whether Paul Petrino wants to strike while the iron’s hot, or see how far he can take his current program in his first head coaching gig — a program headed down from FBS to FCS in 2018 — only he knows.

ONE THING’S for certain. While the Vandals are relatively new to this bowl game business — it’s only Idaho’s third bowl game in its 21 seasons in FBS, and first since 2009 — it’s old hat to Petrino.

Over a 15-year period from 1997 to 2011, he coached (as an assistant) in 13 bowl games.

Two of those games were in the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, in 1997 when he was at Utah State, and in ‘99 when he was at Louisville. (In between those games, Idaho played in the 1998 Humanitarian Bowl, beating Southern Miss).

At Louisville, Petrino coached in bowl games in all nine seasons he was there (1998-2006). He coached at Arkansas in bowl games in 2009 and ‘11, and with Illinois in 2010.

Overall, he’s coached in five winning bowl games in 12 tries.

Four bowl games, in particular, stand out to Petrino.

“The Orange Bowl (a win over Wake Forest in 2006) will always be a huge memory,” he said, “because (daughter) Ava was born five days before we got on the plane to go to it.”

The others? Beating Boise in the 2004 Liberty Bowl, his first year at Illinois in 2010 when the Illini beat Baylor in the Texas Bowl. The last bowl he coached in was in 2011 at Arkansas. He was an assistant at Illinois during the 2011 season, but when brother Bobby was hired at Arkansas after the regular season, he coached with the Razorbacks in the Cotton Bowl, a 29-16 victory over Kansas State.

“They’re all great experiences, and I’m glad this team gets to experience playing in a bowl game,” Petrino said.

YOU WOULD think all teams would be thrilled to play in a bowl game. But these days, with so many bowl games that even teams with losing records are needed to fill all the bowl slots, some teams are more excited than others to play in bowl games.

Getting the Vandals excited to play in a bowl game won’t be a problem for Petrino. He said the Vandal players are well aware the Dec. 22 game vs. Colorado State, in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise, will be televised nationally on ESPN, and will be the only bowl game played that day.

“I was lucky to go to a whole bunch of them in a row and usually to me, it’s the team that’s the most excited to be in the game that wins,” Petrino said. “In most of my experiences in bowl games, when we were real excited and fired up about the bowl we were in, we won. If they were kind of so-so about where they were going, or who they were playing, we usually didn’t win. Our guys (at Idaho) are real excited and happy to be in it.”

The Vandal assistant coaches are out on the road recruiting this week, catching up after missing recruiting time last week preparing the team for its regular season finale last Saturday.

Idaho will resume practice Sunday night.

“All this hard work has came to an end, with something great happening,” Petrino said of the process. “My (three) kids (including Mason, a freshman quarterback who has seen some action this year with the Vandals) were used to Christmas, you went to a bowl game, that’s what you did. And now we’ve had a little drought from that, so it’s nice to get back doing that. I think that’ll be very fun.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.