Talked about it. Wrote about it. Told the team about it. Didn’t matter.
In what was seemingly one of the most predictable losses in the history of the program, the Cards and staff still found a way to go out and mess the bed, even through the noise and chatter of this being a prime position for the team to drop the ball as it has done for multiple seasons consistently. For those saying, “pump the brakes John, most of the team wasn’t even here last year, or the year prior, or the year before that”
I can grant you the point, and the validity behind it, but it only amplifies my frustration with the staff even more.
As I get older I try not to let wins and losses in a college football game ruin my Saturday, or my weekend, and honestly I’m getting better. I can step back and see that there are far greater things of significance than this result, but it doesn’t mean it can’t have an impact on us, and my fear is that if we all grow closer and closer to the apathy so many seek and desire from the most rabid of fans, the program will implode on itself much faster than one can imagine.
I jumped off social media yesterday after I let a few of my thoughts be known, none of which I felt were over the top and honestly, I believe were a very cordial representation of the circumstances we continue to find ourselves in annually. But wouldn’t you know it, as with most interactions publicly, some found offense, and I saw others outside of even my own posts sharing opposing takes as well. As an act of therapy and mental cleansing, I’m going to address some of those thoughts right here, and maybe we can all have a group hug after.
“Everybody loses games, you guys need to relax…”
While it may not be a word for word quote, the sentiment is essentially the same. There are currently 17 teams in the Power Four Conferences that still boast an undefeated record, or roughly 25%. So, I agree, all teams will likely lose at some point, just like the 75% who have already done so four weeks into the year, but this is a disingenuous argument. If losing was the only complaint, then you would have my full support in your frustration, but it’s not the losing, its the “who, what, when, where, and why” behind the losses that creates the firestorm. Wake Forest, California, Stanford, and Pitt, all unranked underdogs in the last four years, and all on the heels of relatively big wins. The proverbial “let down” game that can bite even the best of teams in sports has not only bitten the Cardinals a few times, but has bitten the staff so often it’s generated its own national moniker, “The Brohm Blunder”. It’s not cracked the pages of Meriam-Webster yet, but it’s loosely defined as ‘Losing to a team you should beat, and losing in a fashion that points to a team as unprepared and unfocused’. So if we already agree about the “what” in which our frustration stems, and if the ‘who’, ‘why’, and ‘when’ are infuriating, the ‘where’ is nearly unforgivable. Two of these loses, including this year and last, have occurred in your own building, inside L&N Cardinal Stadium. Everybody loses games. But not everybody loses THESE games, and very few lose THESE games at home.
“This is just what Louisville Football is…”
My belief is that the idea behind this thought process is that Louisville football is a nice program that can win 7-9 football games year in and year out with the proper resources and occasionally you’ll get a little boost and compete for something meaningful every time a presidential election seems to roll around. Can I be blunt? If this is the mindset and the mentality within the confines of the Schnellenberger complex, then get me some new “minds” over there quickly. I refuse to settle for this mediocre mindset and I believe most fans would agree. I know Mike has been very vocal in the past about not judging how people fan, and I can agree that your viewpoint and mine may not be 100% aligned all the time, but if we are supposed to get fired up each season by breaking down depth charts, attending spring camps, attending fall camps, reading and consuming all the stories and audio clips, watching the videos from the football complex, writing a post every day for 100 days straight in the summer counting down until we get Louisville football again, supporting the program monetarily, supporting the program through attending the games, traveling to away games and neutral site games, and so on…the wish isn’t for those of us fans who do this consistently to soak in the waters of 8-4 seasons. Louisville has history. Louisville has two BCS wins, numerous conference championships, has been ranked in the AP Top 10 thirty-four times in the last twenty years, and oh by the way, is now home to a Heisman Trophy. We can disagree on many things, but I beg you to miss me with “this is what Louisville is” because mediocrity and acceptance of subpar performances is certainly not what this program has been for the last thirty years.
“We can’t compete with the big guys, money isn’t there…”
The logistics behind this response are not up for debate by me, maybe by others, but you’ll get no rise from those who follow the topic that Louisville is not spending at the level of many Big Ten and SEC programs, or even some of the top dogs in our own conference. The truth has been laid out generally and now even fairly specifically as of late, and the facts are we don’t have the funds to rival many powerhouse programs with an alumni base that is 10x that of Louisville and who are also getting substantially more from TV contracts and rights based funding. But, if this is your argument for why Louisville can’t beat ‘the Notre Dames or Miamis’ of the world….its best to not bring it up after this program has actually beat ‘the Notre Dames and Miamis’ of the world three out the last five times they have played, in the last four seasons. The argument about money is not that we can’t compete at the highest of highest, I believe we can, the argument is why do we struggle to compete with the lowest of lows. In a recent ‘The Athletic’ article and various sources around college football, we can see roughly where teams are ranked related to spending in the new NIL-era. While UofL is not near the top spenders of Miami and Clemson in conference, their mid-tier spending is much larger than many other schools in the ACC. If I were to choose four teams that rank well below Louisville randomly from out of a hat, how surprised would you be to see ‘Wake Forest, Cal, Stanford, and Pitt’ all appear on that list? After negotiating a new contract this past offseason that will average out to roughly a hair over $8 million annually if taken to fruition, Brohm would be making more than every coach in the ACC not named Dabo, Belichick, and Cristobal. ‘The Brohm Blunder’ is not a talent gap problem, nor is it a depth problem. Getting paid like a Top 4 coach, getting more money for your staff, and getting NIL funds like a Top 7 ACC program are the facts as we sit today….so consistently losing to lower-tier programs is not acceptable, and it’s certainly not an issue driven by lack of funds.
“You guys always overreact to everything….”
I’ll wrap up the quick therapy session with one that is similar to the first, but slightly more accurate. Hand up, I have the tendency to overreact at times. I can admit it, and own it with the best of them. Maybe by Tuesday or Wednesday I can move on to the following week and start to think about who we have next and get excited to watch another game, but if you ask Jeff, or Josh Heird, or anyone on the athletic staff, I think they prefer to have fans that are deeply invested and emotional about the team than ones who could shrug off a loss like this five minutes after the whistle blows. Everyone is free to cheer for the program how they like, and there are tens of thousands of people who are casual supporters that will check the scores, or enjoy going to a game from time to time, but those aren’t the folks spending the majority of the money or generating buzz around the program. Any exercise to try and get an accurate number on the splits would be futile, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s just say 20% of the total fanbase are the diehards who never miss a game, never miss an interview, and can tell you who the two deep right guard is three weeks before the season. Lets say another 30% are the folks who enjoy the games, support the program, but it’s not that big of a deal to them overall. They cheer, but their days and nights are not planned around Louisville sporting events. Finally, the last 50% are those who own a few Louisville t-shirts in their closet, and might even watch a big game from time to time, but are usually just fans by association because their parents liked the team, they support just because it’s the local school, or maybe they just love wearing black and red. Like it or not, that first 20% probably spends 80% of the money the athletic department gathers during the course of the year due to season tickets, concessions, athletic apparel, donations, and so on. So if the 20% tend to overreact at times because they are so invested in the program, I’d much rather see that from this fanbase than to see those 20% start to become 15%, or 10% because the apathy and acceptance of mediocrity creeps in. When you lose the folks who are passionate, or dare I say “fanatical” about the success of the program, or the standards which have been set by coaches and players before them, then you start to lose the very foundation of who Louisville is and what they built.
I fully believe this team can turn things around and rip off five or six wins in a row and we can start to get excited again about who they are and what they can do. But I’ll never apologize for holding this program to the standard it built itself on. We’ll move on to next week because eventually that’s what the 20% does, but we don’t have to accept mediocrity on the way there. We’ll get over it, just not today.
