LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Charlie Strong believes in competition. He believes in sticking your nose in the middle of every collision. He absolutely believes in the simple truth that winning college football teams impose their will on every play.
Here is one thing Strong does not believe in: Comfort zones.
"Comfortable sounds like a good word, but it's really a bad word because then you start getting complacent and start not doing the things like you used to do them," U of L center Mario Benavides said. "You kind of forget how you got to where you are."
Where U of L was before Strong arrived was racing toward football irrelevance. Benavides jokes that Strong talks to his veteran players if they only won a game or two before the new coaching staff arrived after the 2009 season.
Now the Cardinals are at the start of a football season as richly anticipated as any season they have played in six years.
They are the solid pick to win the Big East. They are the solid pick, by two touchdowns, to handle the University of Kentucky Sunday in Papa John's Cardinal Stadium.
Some national football analysts have the Cardinals playing Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Others argue those people have it wrong. Their computer models put U of L in the Sugar Bowl against Alabama. Imagine.
Miami, the beach and 72,319 in the Orange Bowl, or New Orleans, the French Quarter and the 72,003 in the Superdome?
Those are not the attendance figures that Alex Kupper, another Louisville senior on the offensive line, quotes when he talks about the fiber of the upperclassmen on this Cardinal team.
Kupper was there Nov. 27, 2009 for the farewell game of the Steve Kragthorpe Era. Ask Kupper what he remembers seeing when he jogged back to the sidelines at halftime.
"Walking out to 9,000 people," Kupper said.
The official attendance for that late Friday morning game against Rutgers was 23,422. But Kupper remembers 9,000 in the stands for the second half of a game that dissolved into a 20-point defeat.
"That was probably the lowest point," Kupper said. "The program wasn't in shambles because we obviously got up off our feet. But that was probably the lowest point. There was no excitement about the program. We were just playing mediocre football."
Those were bad times for Louisville football, as bad as any times since the program moved to the Big East Conference. But they're also valuable times because whenever any of the young players start chirping about all the great things being predicted for this team, veterans like Benavides, Kupper and safety Hakeem Smith can talk to them about Rutgers 34, Louisville 14 or Cincinnati 41, Louisville 10 or the four consecutive games that U of L lost to Kentucky.
"We're just working like we have a chip on our shoulders," Smith said. "That's how everybody feels. We'll keep pushing."
They keep pushing because Charlie Strong has no time for a comfort zone in any of the blocks of time during Cardinals' practices. Strong knows how inept and impotent this program was when he took over. He understands what a legitimate prime-time college team looks like, too. Coached one at Florida. Coached against many at Alabama, Louisiana State and across the Southeastern Conference.
Get back to work. You're not that good. You are not far away from being awful.
"Coach Strong always brings a sense of urgency," Benavides said. "We can never get complacent. He always makes us feel like we can always do better. Those are the two main things he brings to this program -- a toughness, an attitude and a sense of urgency."
With Charlie Strong, there will be no comfort zone.
Copyright 2012 WDRB News. All Rights Reserved.
The veterans on the University of Louisville football team have not forgotten the misery of the 2009 season.
