LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – When Louisville faces USC on Wednesday in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego, it will play one of the most storied brands in college football, on network television. But it would do well to give a nod to the only other Louisville team to play a bowl game in California – 53 years ago.
From one California bowl trip to another, Louisville football has made a remarkable journey. More on that first California bowl team in a bit.
For the current Cardinals, Wednesday's game is about finishing well, and advancing its own brand. Let’s be clear. This is not the USC of O.J. Simpson, or Reggie Bush, Marcus Allen or Carson Palmer. Heck, this isn’t even the USC of Caleb Williams – who is one of 10 players on the Trojans two-deep to opt out of the bowl game.
Instead, U of L will face a ho-hum collection of 4-star and 5-star talent that has waited for this opportunity all season. Easy enough.
Another preview of our Holiday Bowl pregame show at 6:30 on @WDRBNews: @rickbozich wrote about Jeff Brohm going to a Super Bowl with the San Diego Chargers. He loved the weather, paychecks and not getting hit as a backup quarterback. Thanks to the @chargers for the photos! pic.twitter.com/iYHWOTQuT3
— Tyler Greever (@Tyler_Greever) December 27, 2023
“Obviously, they're one of the top dogs, the blue bloods of college football, and they have been for a long, long time. A program with great tradition,” Louisville offensive lineman Eric Miller said. “They're going to have talent everywhere on the field. They’ve been on the wrong side of some close games against some really good teams, so they're a lot better than the record is going to show you. And they're going to have dudes all over the place, man. They’re going to be athletic. We've got a good challenge ahead of us, especially offensively, because they’ve had a little bit of change on the defensive side. So, we’ve been trying to figure out what they're going to do, and just preparing for a lot of different things – which is kind of what comes with playing in a bowl game.”
Louisville, too, is without some big names, most notably leading rusher Jawhar Jordan and leading receiver Jamari Thrash. But the Cardinals have been operating without either of those guys at 100% for a while.
Louisville does have a quarterback, Jack Plummer, who threw for 403 yards and three touchdowns against the Trojans last season, as a quarterback for Cal.
“We just need to treat it as any other game and really focus on what’s on the film and go from there,” Plummer said. “You know, it's not a situation that we haven't been in before. We've played in big games, and this is going to be another big game for us. We don't need to do anything different. If we play our brand of football and play like we know how to play, that will be good.”
Louisville hasn’t ever played USC. Its current players weren’t alive for the last bowl game the Cardinals played in California. Many of their parents weren’t alive for that game. I was alive. I was a year-and-a-half old.
That team, like this Louisville team, came into the bowl game with three losses. That team, like this one, had dropped a defensive struggle to Florida State.
That team had a couple of members who went on to fame as ESPN commentators (coach Lee Corso and linebacker Tom Jackson). This one? We’ll see.
The previous bowl trip to California was a few days before Christmas, 1970. It was the second bowl game in Louisville football history, earned by a rag-tag group of young players and a few veterans that Corso convinced to hang around for one more season.
“Long-haired, mustachioed linemen,” Courier-Journal columnist Dave Kindred called them. That Louisville team lost 3 out of 4 to start the season. Then it won seven straight to arrive in the Rose Bowl Stadium that September day for the 25th Pasadena Bowl, against Long Beach State.
A crowd of over 20,000 was in attendance. There weren’t many Cardinal fans. Long Beach State was a 12-point favorite. But Louisville sprinted to a 21-7 lead, until Long Beach caught some momentum late to tie the game.
Still, Louisville was driving for the go-ahead score and looked ready to win on a late field goal. It had the ball on the Long Beach 25 on third and 7. Quarterback John Madeya threw a screen pass to running back Tom Jesukaitis, who was supposed to run out of bounds to stop the clock. Instead, he improvised. He saw a wide-open receiver, and threw a pass downfield to Cookie Brinkman, who ran in for the touchdown.
Of course, you can only throw one forward pass per play, and the ensuing penalty took Louisville out of field goal range. The game ended in a 24-24 tie.
Said Jesukaitis: “Oh well. We won for a minute there, anyway.”
Corso, God love him, was a bit more quotable: “This is a helluva long way to come for a tie.”
Sone members from that team gathered for a 50-year reunion in 2020 via Zoom. Jim Kaczmarek, Amos Martin, Dave Norris, Larry Ball, Tom Edelen, Jesukaitis, Gary Barnes, and Gary Inman shared stories about that memorable season – the first conference football championship in Louisville history.
That team had six players go on to make All-American teams and seven who made it to the NFL.
“We’ll remember this ’70 team because that’s what kicked it all off,” said Barnes, It was the tradition that kept on going,” said Barnes, a tight end and wideout. “It’s unbelievable in 50 years what that school has gone through, and this was the start. It was all of us.”
Wednesday when Louisville takes the field, it will be a touchdown or so favorite against the Trojans. That Louisville would ever be in this kind of a game would have been little more than California Dreaming back in 1970. It was still a city college, and would be so until later in the year when it would join the state higher university system. Its enrollment was just under 10,000 students.
Wednesday, Louisville enters the game ranked No. 15 in the nation. It's playing in its 19th different bowl game and its 26th appearance, all but one since that Pasadena Bowl tie. It has its own Heisman Trophy winning alum in Lamar Jackson, who is among the favorites to win the NFL Most Valuable Player award (for a second time.)
Regardless of the outcome, it’s worthwhile to stop and remember once in a while just how far things have come, and appreciate those who got them to this point.
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