LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB + WAVE) — Pete Golding paid Louisville a compliment Monday that probably ought to come with shoulder pads.
"They look like an SEC football team," the Ole Miss coach said.
A little later, he upgraded it.
"To me, this is an SEC game," Golding said.
The SEC doesn't award points for resemblance, though. Nobody in Nashville on Sunday night is going to stop the game after warmups and hand Jeff Brohm a certificate for looking expensive. Now go play football.
That's part of what makes this opener against No. 9 Ole Miss so interesting.
For three years, Brohm has been building Louisville toward this kind of game. Not simply winning nine games, which the No. 24 Cardinals have done in consecutive seasons. Not simply getting ranked, playing in bowl games or hanging around the ACC race.
Toward looking — and playing — like a program that belongs on the field against the heavyweights.
Now somebody from the SEC has looked across the tape room and said: Mission accomplished.
Sort of. Golding wasn't engaging in coach-speak flattery. He was describing what concerns him — Isaac Brown, one of the best running backs Ole Miss will see all season. He talked about Brown's explosiveness, speed, contact balance and ability to finish runs, and noted that Brohm is patient enough to keep feeding him until everybody in the stadium knows Brown is going to get the ball. Then Brohm gives it to him anyway.
Brown is fresh and ready after a good camp, Brohm said Monday. That matters. Louisville spent enough time last season discovering what life looks like without its best offensive player. It would prefer not to run that experiment again.
Golding also sees Louisville's defensive edges, with length, athleticism, violence — his word. A defense that can affect the quarterback, on a team that physically doesn't look much different from what Ole Miss sees in its own league.
Now Louisville gets to discover whether that's a compliment or a challenge. Probably both, because Louisville has been doing some talking about this defense, too.
New defensive play caller Mark Ivey was asked Monday whether opening against players like quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy gives his group an immediate chance to make a statement. Ivey didn't quite take the bait — one game is one game — but he acknowledged the obvious.
"If we perform well against these guys," Ivey said, "it will bode well for, if anything else, our confidence, letting us know, hey, we got a chance to be really good."
In other words, Louisville would like to see the lab results, too.
There's been no shortage of preseason optimism about this defense — experienced edges, talented linebackers, a rebuilt secondary, more depth. Sunday is where adjectives begin turning into evidence.
This is the dangerous part of program building. First you ask people to take you seriously. Then they do.
For a long time, Louisville could enter a game like this with house money. Beat an SEC opponent and everybody throws a parade. Lose, and that's why they put all those conference logos on the jerseys. That excuse is becoming less available. Brohm has raised the floor here.
He's 28-12 in three seasons. Louisville has won nine games each of the past two years. It's been ranked. It's beaten two Top 10 teams. It has accumulated enough talent that opposing coaches no longer talk about Louisville as an interesting schematic challenge.
They talk about Louisville's players.
That's progress. It's also how expectations sneak into the building. Brohm knows it.
"We did not have Ole Miss on the schedule," he said Monday. "Now they're on there, so we've got to step up to the challenge and prove that we're worthy to play a great football team."
Prove you're worthy, Brohm says. Not prove you can keep it respectable. Prove you belong.
Louisville isn't playing 16 SEC teams Sunday. It's playing one — a very good one, with a proven quarterback, a proven running back and the kind of talent that makes defensive coordinators spend August staring at ceilings. Louisville has plenty of its own.
What makes the matchup compelling is that the Cardinals have reached the stage where the comparison no longer sounds ridiculous. Golding looked at Louisville's tape and saw an SEC team. Brohm looked at the schedule and saw an opportunity. Those are related — because eventually program development has to produce something more tangible than compliments from the other coach. Eventually the program has to cash the checks it wrote for its roster, though it shouldn't be forgotten that in these games, the other teams wrote bigger ones.
Still, Sunday night feels like one of those moments. Louisville doesn't have to win this game to validate everything Brohm has built. That would be silly. But it would be equally silly to pretend this is merely a nice little opening test with nothing larger attached to it.
Louisville has spent three seasons trying to become the kind of football team that doesn't need an explanation when it lines up across from the SEC.
Golding says it has gotten there. Good. Read the quote. Then throw it away. Because Sunday night, looking like an SEC team is no longer the assignment.
Beating one is.
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