Apparently the devil carries a clipboard.

Atlanta Falcon players. Falcon owner Arthur Blank. The governor of Georgia. Atlanta media. National media. They’ve all made Bobby Petrino sound like he’s Satan himself for leaving them with three games to go.

But if you apply the “real world smell test” I think you’ll see that Petrino is no different than you or me. What’s the “real world smell test”?

Take a set of circumstances and apply it to the real world and you tell me if it holds up.

Do people in the “real world” look for jobs, leave jobs, take jobs, bounce around, even if the timing of those departures often stink?

Have you ever done that?

Do you know someone who has? Have you ever walked in a room with the sole intention of networking? Getting your name out there? Planting seeds for future opportunity?

Do people in the “real world” take a job but then realize a few months later that the job wasn’t what they thought it would be and they look to get out?

Aren’t you taught, in the “real world”, that you have to look out for yourself because no one else will?

When an owner gives a coach a vote-of-confidence, but then fires him two weeks later in the middle of a season, is he being dishonest, disloyal or was it just time for a change? What’s the difference?

I Googled “job hopping” yesterday. One expert said you should stay at a job for at least a year. Another said three years. One offered advice on how to “spin” a resume dotted with a history of job hopping.

When you think about it, in the “real world”, is what Bobby Petrino did, that bad? Why we hold professional sports to a higher moral standard is something I’ll never understand.

The two things he did that were truly egregious: He lied right to Blank’s face when asked specifically about the Arkansas job. And he informed his players of his departure with a note left in their locker. Cowardly to be sure.

But to have the Falcons players themselves rip Petrino is laugh-out-loud hypocrisy. These are the same boneheads who wore “Free Mike Vick” t-shirts Monday night. Why don’t they accuse Vick of abandoning them? Why is Vick not a dishonest man in their eyes?

And you’re going to tell me that every single Falcon player has played hard every single moment of this season? That nobody has quit?

Sorry, but I live in the real world.