Interesting article on University of Louisville
This article talks about how Louisville built there program, hope ya'll enjoy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/sp...nt&oref=slogin
September 16, 2006
At Louisville, a Big-Time Program Without the Tradition
By JOE DRAPE
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Sept. 15 — It will be different for the Louisville athletic director, Tom Jurich, on Saturday when the Cardinals take the field against Miami. First, the game will be played in daylight. Second, it will be televised on ABC. Best of all, a Louisville victory means thoughts of a national title will live here another week.
The Cardinals, after all, are a team with little tradition, a team that entered the nation’s consciousness recently by agreeing to play Tuesday, Thursday — any night that ESPN asked. When Jurich came here in the fall of 1997, he had to plead with Adidas to let him buy shoes and gear for the team at retail prices.
“I offered them signs and billboards that they didn’t want just so my coaches could tell recruits that we were an Adidas school,” Jurich said.
No more. Louisville, which now plays in the Big East Conference, has gone to a bowl game eight consecutive years.
The rise of Louisville football has more to do with 21st-century marketing than 20th-century tradition.
The most famous Cardinal of them all, the late Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas, played on teams that won only seven games over three seasons in the early 1950’s. The ESPN analyst Lee Corso was 28-11-3 as the coach from 1969 to 1972. Howard Schnellenberger’s record was below .500 over 10 years, but he gave Louisville one of its most memorable seasons, going 10-1 in the 1990 season and beating Alabama in the Fiesta Bowl.
When Jurich arrived from Colorado State, he had the good fortune of inheriting a new 42,000-seat stadium, and the foresight to hire an old friend, John L. Smith, who had been the coach at Utah State and employed a wide-open, high-scoring passing game. Smith, now the coach at Michigan State, brought along an innovative offensive coordinator, Bobby Petrino.
“It was by plan,” Jurich said. “We needed to play entertaining football on the field, and off it we needed change — no shock — to our culture.”
Just as he had wheedled a deal with Adidas, Jurich offered his high-scoring football team to ESPN programmers. Of Louisville’s 44 television appearances since 1998, 36 have been on ESPN networks.
“We’ve been on television every night but Monday,” he said. “It was tough on our fans, but we were reaching potential recruits and football fans.”
Soon, however, the Louisville faithful embraced nighttime tailgating, and sellouts became the rule.
Whether or not the 12th-ranked Cardinals ( 2-0) defeat No. 17 Miami (1-1), the university president, James Ramsey, says the team’s impact on campus goes far beyond the 71-30 record the team has posted the past eight years.
On Friday, Ramsey held a celebration for thousands of faculty, staff and students on the lawn in front of Grawemeyer Hall. It honored goals that were met more than a year early on a 10-year academic plan. Among them were doubling the university’s endowment and increasing the number of endowed chairs and professorships.
“The football team, and the athletics program, has helped transform this university from a financially struggling metropolitan commuter school to a major research university that is attractive to the best faculty and students in the country,” Ramsey said.
“They have helped us raise our profile and opened up new markets for recruitment,’’ Ramsey added. “This is a very different institution than it was eight years ago.”
The success of football has also helped Jurich raise $200 million privately for the athletic department; $16.5 million of it was spent on Cardinal Park, a multisport complex. It not only helped 12 of Louisville’s sports teams earn national rankings last year, but it increased the number of sports available to women and has become a focal point in the city because it is used by local high schools.
The university built new dormitories and doubled the number of students living on campus. It was Louisville’s entry into the Big East last season, however, that has increased donations for academics and athletics.
“Those two areas fuel each other,” said Harry Jones, a Louisville native who is also a former chairman of the university’s board of trustees and a major donor. “Now you’re not only catching the eyes and ears of potential students, you’re being put out in front of top-flight faculty and researchers. By raising the money and spending it, it lets them know that we’re committed to being the very best that we can be.”
Louisville demonstrated how willing it was to pursue elite status in football last July when it signed Petrino to a 10-year, $25 million contract. He was 29-8 over three seasons, including an 11-1 mark in 2004 when the Cardinals led the nation in total offense (539 yards a game) and scoring (49.7 points a game).
Each season, Petrino has attracted the attention of premier football schools like Auburn and L.S.U. He turned down a lucrative offer to coach the Oakland Raiders.
“We think he’s one of the brightest minds in coaching, and we weren’t going to lose him because of dollars,” Jurich said.
Petrino said he got the message that Louisville was committed to him, and so did the rest of college football.
“We want to win a national championship here,” he said. “I know I can see that level of commitment, and I know the resources are here.”
It was considered a recruiting coup when the junior quarterback Brian Brohm and the senior running back Michael Bush — each considered Heisman Trophy contenders until Bush broke his leg against Kentucky in the opener — were persuaded to stay at home and play for the Cardinals.
Next year, another highly rated quarterback will play for Louisville: Matt Simms, the son of the former Giants quarterback Phil, and the brother of the Buccaneers quarterback, Chris.
To Brohm, the program’s present and future seem bright, and national titles seem to be in reach.
“I talk to recruits a lot, and they see that we have as good as talent as any other school, and as good as facilities,” Brohm said. “We’re on television, the stadium is packed and wild. Instead of living up to somebody else’s history, we have everything in place to make our own.”
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