The other day, as Arkansas Razorbacks head football coach Bobby Petrino’s motorcycle wreck was beginning to be scrutinized, I was riding along on Alabama Highway 59 with a cup of hot coffee in my hand and a dozen doughnuts – two of them raspberry filled – on the seat beside me.

Since then, Petrino has been fired by the University of Arkansas. The college football world has been turned on its ear as a result. Heck, that’s earth-shattering news for any self-respecting college football fan and Southeastern Conference crazy, and I include myself in both groups. But for a second forget about the fact that Bobby, 51 and married, had a 25-year-old female ex-volleyball player on the back of his motorcycle at the time he wiped out; forget about the fact that he had only recently given her a high-paying job in the Arkansas football department; forget about all the details Bobby didn’t mention to his superiors concerning this woman he “knew;” and forget about the fact he tried to cover up the fact he was riding tandem.

Forget all that and concentrate on the motorcycle.

What’s up with all these middle-aged dudes riding motorcycles? There’s no denying that the motorcycle is Viagra on two-wheels for these guys. Sure, young studs like Orlando Bloom like to ride but look at the old guys who do so: George Clooney, Steven Tyler and, sadly, Bobby Petrino. Oh, yeah, and Bob Riley. Statistics by the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA) point out that a motorcycle rider 40 years old or older is 20 times more likely to be killed that a guy the same age driving a car. So why take the chance?

Simple: To bolster that drooping male image; what else? These old guys want to be cool like Marlon Brandon and Bob Dylan who, in their prime, got their cool stamp punched in part because they rode on two wheels. (Note: Actor Gary Busey is the poster child for flaunting the dangers of riding the motorcycle, especially without wearing a helmet.)

I don’t want this to be about me, me, me, but think about what I said at the beginning. On the day Bobby Petrino, his face covered in road rash and wearing a neck brace, was appearing before the media in connection with his macho motorcycle ride with a hottie, I was driving a Honda with one hand and holding hot coffee with the other. I had a dozen doughnuts. That’s doughnuts, the same thing that doctor in Panama City recently equated with death on the electronic sign in front of his office.

That same doctor was forced to close his practice for similar electronic warnings about sweet tea (“liquid sugar”), hamburgers (“spare tire”) and French fries (“thunder thighs”), none of which scare me in the least. I’m not even afraid of that New York State Fair “donut burger,” which is a big hunk of meat and all the fixin’s between two glazed doughnuts. And coffee, I was drinking coffee that was chocked full of caffeine and acrylamide, that substance found in all baked, roasted, toasted and fried foods (I eat ‘em all), plus I was driving on a clogged highway full of fast tourists and slow snowbirds, a deadly mix if there ever was one.

All I’m saying is there is more than one way to throw caution to the wind. The old guys on motorcycles tend to get all the attention, but keep in mind for every old dude on a chopper there an old dude tempting fate with a cruller or a cupcake, and I’m not talking about Bobby Petrino’s riding partner.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.