THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, February 7, 2016

Imagine Paul Petrino, Idaho football coach, sitting in on a home visit as another school stopped by to recruit his son, Pullman High senior quarterback Mason Petrino.

“Yeah, that would have been interesting,” Paul Petrino said.

Didn’t happen, but coach Petrino didn’t mind seeing his son go through the recruiting process anyway — even though he was pretty sure son would eventually opt to play for dad.

“In this profession, we decided to let it all play out and make sure, to be honest with you, where I was,” said Petrino, the Vandals’ head coach for the past three seasons. “I pretty much always thought he was either going to play for me or my brother (Bobby, head coach at Louisville) or Jeff Brohm (at Western Kentucky). He and Jeff Brohm (who formerly played at Louisville, where Paul Petrino was once an assistant) have a really good relationship.”

Most of Mason Petrino’s recruiting interest early came from guys who were coached by Paul Petrino, and noticed Mason hanging around the program. Carroll College, where Paul and Bobby played for their dad, showed interest as well.

“Actually Missouri sent him quite a bit of stuff his junior year, but then they got two early commitments,” Paul Petrino said. “It was nice for him to get mail from other people — and I actually liked it. The team I liked him getting mail from as much as anybody was Missouri; they sent out some really nice things, so I’d take some of that into the office and show (the other coaches) things they were using in recruiting … and they were good ideas.”

Mason Petrino’s only official visit was to Idaho, and obviously he and his father made unofficial visits to Louisville.

“We saw a couple of campuses — but I didn’t really want to take him too many places,” Petrino said with a laugh.

The one home visit that was a little unusual was when Petrino was recruiting Ty Graham of Cheney High. Graham’s father, John, is associate head coach at Eastern Washington.

“I even said it right off the bat (during the official visit) — I’ve never done this before,” Petrino said. “I’ve recruited a lot of coaches’ kids, but they were either retired or in a different league … so that was a little bit different.”

It worked, as Graham was one of the 18 Vandals signees announced this past week.

PETRINO TOUCHED on a few other topics in an interview last week at The Coeur d’Alene Resort, just prior to a booster function celebrating the Vandals’ recent football signing class.

• A breakthrough third season, as the Vandals went from one win in each of the first two seasons under Petrino, to four wins — and the potential for so much more.

“And the sad thing is, there’s two games where we blew leads, or we’re in a bowl game,” Petrino said. “We won four, and we had 21-point leads in two other games. So now we’ve got to take that next step, but at least we showed enough where we were to that point, and now we’ve just got to make sure we get into a bowl game next season.”

That means the Vandals will have something to deal with next season that they haven’t had to deal with much since moving up from FCS two decades ago — expectations.

“And that’s good,” Petrino said. “I think everyone feels it right now, all the players feel it. You feel it around the Dome, you feel it in the workouts right now, and they expect it. Now we’ve got to go make it happen.”

Bring on the expectations, he said.

“We’re going to get seven or eight (wins) next year,” Petrino said. “The goal next year is to win the league, and go from there. … I’ve always believed in what we do. I believe in the way we prepare, the way we work, and that’s something you’ve always got to continue to believe in. And it really paid off, and our guys got tougher.”

• He said a big win last fall was the Troy game — where plane troubles kept the Vandals from leaving for Alabama from Spokane until after midnight on Friday. The team got to Alabama with just a couple hours to spare, went out and played the game, and won.

“And it really showed our players how tough we became, and how all that hard work has made us mentally tough, and I’m not sure a whole lot of teams could have won in the circumstances that we had that day,” Petrino said. “When you look back on it, and we start winning year after year after year, it might all go back to that trip, that might be the turning point right there.”

Now, he says, the Vandals need to expect to win — and not be shocked when they’re up 21 points in the fourth quarter on the road. They have two workout T-shirts for this offseason — one says “Family,” the other “Expect to Win.”

“There’s still some really good talent in the league, but we’re getting there, where we can be competitive in every game,” he said.

• Dealing with some early season distractions (the suspension of star receiver/return man Dezmon Epps, his reinstatement and eventual dismissal from the team; as well as an anonymous email alleging abuse and improprieties in the program, to name a few) that could have sent the Vandals to another double-digit loss season. Instead, Idaho ended up 4-7.

“I really think it brought us closer together, to be honest with you,” Petrino said. “I think through all the distractions, and all the people trying to tear us down from the outside, it make everybody on the inside really come together. … and it probably made us all meet more, one on one with each other, between coaches and coaches, coaches and players.”

As for Epps, who was originally disciplined for stealing merchandise from a store, then later dismissed for allegedly striking a woman …

“I think the easiest thing always is to get rid of somebody,” Petrino said. “But there’s a couple of things that I believe that you can never do (like hitting a woman). But other than that, I try to give guys second chances … it’s easy for people on the outside to just say, get rid of somebody. Because they’ve never recruited them, they’ve never met their mom, and their grandma, and their brother, and their sister, and they don’t realize that kid has a family and he comes from something and you’re trying to make him better.

“We still got him graduated, so that was something that was a success,” Petrino said. “Unfortunately he couldn’t get it done all the way.”

• Mason isn’t the only Division I athlete in the family. His sister, AnneMari, earned a softball scholarship to Montana. Because head football coaches are not allowed to recruit in the spring, Paul said he was able to watch his daughter play softball, his son play soccer in the spring.

For obvious reasons, he wasn’t able to watch all of Mason’s football games, or watch AnneMari in soccer (in the fall) and basketball.

“I did get to see her good game the other night, when she scored 26 points,” the proud father said.

However, thanks to HUDL, an online service, he said he’s been able to catch up on his kids’ football and basketball games he missed in person.

• As for Idaho’s future in the Sun Belt Conference — the Vandals have been a member in football the past two seasons, but the conference will vote in March whether to keep them (and New Mexico State) in the league after the 2017 season — Petrino says he’s not going to worry about what he can’t control.

“I know we’re going to be in the Sun Belt the next two years, I feel like we’re going to be really good, so let’s prepare to be one of the best teams in the Sun Belt and get to a bowl game,” he said. “And to be honest with you, I haven’t worried too much more about it because I’m not going to have any control over it.”

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