LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two things here, a day after Kentucky came into L&N Stadium and walked away with a 38-31 upset win over No. 9 Louisville.
First, for Louisville, the loss hurts. There's no way around it. You only get one chance at your first time, and I can promise you, Jeff Brohm did not want his first game against Kentucky to be a loss. Sources say he was Bobby Petrino-level angry after the game. Brohm gets it. He went all-in on this game. And to have it booted away on a couple of fumbles and a misguided kickoff strategy was galling.
I can think of only two more painful football losses that I've covered since I started covering Louisville football way back in 2001. One came at Miami when the Cardinals punted to Devin Hester and he made them pay. The other came at Rutgers with a shot at a BCS bowl on the line.
The pain is real. I listened to my friend Mark Ennis on his 93.9 FM postgame show after the Louisville loss, and his first caller, a man named Lawrence, said, “This loss is going to hurt me till the day I die.”
He was deadly serious.
So, just know, I'm not here to understate the impact of the loss. I say that, because what follows will likely sound like I'm doing just that.
The second thing I have to say is that, for Brohm at Louisville, this is only the beginning. The good thing about it hurting this bad is that this program wasn't supposed to be here, not this fast. It was picked to finish eighth in the ACC.
Before the season, Brohm was downplaying expectations to anyone who would listen. He knew his team had some limitations. He would only learn their extent over his first few games. On the defensive side, he learned them in the season-opener against Georgia Tech. On the offensive side, he saw them a couple of weeks later against Indiana.
He improvised, in ways I've outlined and in many others.
This team did not go 10-2 in the regular season on talent, to borrow a much-panned line from a Louisville coach in another sport. It went 10-2 on gutsy plays, on comebacks, on creative coaching, on not beating itself, and on a manageable schedule.
Louisville's Jaylin Alderman asks for noise from the crowd during a 38-31 loss to Kentucky.
It earned the No. 9 ranking in the nation. I believe that. I also believe that it wasn't ever the ninth best team in the nation, not if Alabama is the No. 8 team in the nation.
But here we are. Louisville finished in sole possession of second place in the ACC. It is headed to the conference championship game. That's an incredible accomplishment in Year No. 1, regardless of how it fares against Florida State in Charlotte Saturday night.
And it is all gravy, as they used to say back where I grew up.
Brohm wasn't building for this year, though he was under a good bit of pressure to win right away. That he got the program into the Top 10 was more winning, with more speed, than even the most optimistic outlooks predicted.
And that, to repeat the good news for Louisville fans, is only the beginning. While he'll face tougher schedules – both within the ACC and in the nonconference – in coming years, Brohm should also be able to bring more talent to Louisville, more quarterbacks and wideouts and tight ends to execute his preferred offensive approach, more transfer portal additions and high school seniors.
What happened in this 10-2 season isn't some kind of chance-of-a-lifetime. It's a starting point.
Louisville fans, yes, are tired of being looked down upon by Kentucky. And losing five straight in that rivalry is a byproduct of mismanagement. But under new management, it should not continue, at least not on a regular basis.
Nor should Louisville fans worry much about what Kentucky thinks of them, or of the ubiquitous “L's Down” gesture.
Kentucky's best bowl win in the past 50 years was in the 1976 Peach Bowl. In that same span, Louisville has won the Fiesta, Sugar and Gator Bowls, had a Heisman Trophy winner and produced an NFL MVP and a Super Bowl MVP. Its coaches have been hired away by Oklahoma, Michigan State, the Atlanta Falcons and Texas Longhorns. It's gone from playing in a dilapidated 48,000-seat stadium at the Kentucky Fairgrounds to filling a 60,000-seat stadium on campus.
Saturday checks another milestone off the bucket list – a Power 5 conference championship game.
If all that equals “L's Down,” well, maybe down is something Kentucky should aspire to. Mark Stoops won his third game against a Top 10 team on Saturday. During the span of his Kentucky tenure, Louisville has beaten more Top 10 teams than he has – and that's been in the midst of Louisville's worst football stretch in 30 years. None of that lessens the loss to Kentucky, mind you, nor is it meant to. This loss did some damage.
But when Louisville has it going, no program in the state has accomplished more – even the one with far more resources and a more prestigious conference and a five-game winning streak in the current series.
And Brohm, in his first season, has shown every indication in Year No. 1 that he is fully capable of getting the good times rolling again.
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