LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Maybe it's my age. Maybe I watched too many sitcoms in the 1990s when I should've been reading the classics. But there aren't many sports situations I can't equate to a Seinfeld episode.
Trivial, yes. Worthless, perhaps. But occasionally it's a useful exercise. Like now. I've identified a major problem with the University of Louisville.
It's a bad-breaker upper.
I see schools all over the country part ways with coaches, have athletic directors come and go, and nothing happens. Everybody waves goodbye, says hello to the new guys and moves right along.
At Kentucky, for instance, John Calipari got rid of two assistant coaches this past offseason and it was a love-fest. Chris Mack cuts Dino Gaudio loose and it winds up all over TMZ, right down to a secret audio tape, somebody being called a toad, Gaudio in court pleading guilty to extortion, Mack in hot water with the NCAA and the college basketball world shaking its head, side-glancing over and saying one word.
"Louisville."
At Louisville, there has to be a knock-down, drag-out. Louisville is the couple in the bar arguing quietly in the corner until there's an outburst and everybody is staring and he's ticked off and all his boys are trying to keep him from hitting somebody and she's in tears and wants to leave but her girls are trying to get her to stay.
An AD might leave most schools without much drama, but Vince Tyra is about to become athletic director at Del Boca Vista and I expect to see all of his logo gear out in a big pile in front of the student center on Floyd Street.
If you don't wind up in a courtroom after a Louisville breakup, you've done something wrong. If you don't have bruised feelings and a swollen non-disclosure clause, you weren't trying hard enough. If there's not a long trail of tears and accusations and three days' worth of talk-radio rants, you didn't do something right.
When Tom Jurich was breaking up with Denny Crum, it was darn near a civil war. There were death threats.
The end of John L. Smith's tenure was announced on TV while he was on the field coaching Louisville in a bowl game. And if that wasn't enough, he lectured the fan base on his way out the door by giving an interview to a local reporter while he was packing up his office during Bobby Petrino's introduction downstairs.
I know, because I was that reporter, and his assertion that Louisville fans didn't "know where they are on the food chain," still makes some of them bristle.
And Petrino, don't get me started.
He was breaking up the minute he got in the door. Louisville kept coming back. He got caught flirting with Auburn. Louisville took him back. He interviewed with LSU. Louisville took him back. He went to the Atlanta Falcons, left a note and ghosted them, went to Arkansas, crashed his motorcycle with his girlfriend and got fired. Louisville took him back.
Then there was the Rick Pitino breakup. The breakup to end all breakups. Three words: Strippers, cash, FBI. The only winners were the attorneys. The NCAA got custody of the championship banner.
That was a prelude to the Tom Jurich break-up. One break-up to rule them all. A true heavyweight tilt. Louisville felt it was open and shut. Two words made them think twice: revenge porn.
For his second Louisville break-up, Petrino wanted out so badly that he went full George Costanza, did anything he could to get fired short of dragging Lamar Jackson's Heisman behind his car through the parking lot on a chain. That was next on the list. Turns out getting beat by more than four touchdowns at Syracuse was enough.
Tyra fired him, and had to pay him $14 million for the trouble.
As far as I know, Louisville is still in the courts working out its breakup with former president James Ramsey.
And now comes Tyra. Three days into a bunch of executive session griping and "can you believe what he did?" sessions, the Louisville trustees finally come out with an, "OK, then go," message. Nothing says it's over like voiding the non-compete and throwing out the requirement of 30-days' notice.
That's board-speak for changing the status to, "It's complicated," and keying the guy's car. Except that it's a university car.
Louisville fans are complaining about him on talk radio because he couldn't hire a football coach who didn't want to come here and the coach who did come here isn't winning enough. The basketball coach most demanded that he hire has gotten in some NCAA hot water, and didn't he know better than to listen to them, anyway?
Yeah sure, he gave the university back nearly a million dollars in salary and bonuses and donations and even LAND during four years as athletic director, but what about him being a UK guy? He wanted football to fail. He didn’t care enough about the school. If he really loved Louisville, he'd have pursued a coach who had turned him down to fill a position that was not open.
Or maybe he did. Maybe he cared TOO much.
Anyway, I've figured it all out now. Louisville is a bad breaker-upper.
What's that? Hang on, text message. President Neeli Bendapudi was named president at Penn State? What is this, a Taylor Swift song? Sure, go ahead, get Happy Valley. Sounds about right.
Louisville.
I just wonder at what point anybody around here looks at all this and starts to think, "It's not them, it's us."
Nah. Just kidding. It's them.
Somebody text Jeff Brohm and see if he's still awake.
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