LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Two years, minimum. That was the consensus on how long it would take the University of Louisville football program to get back to a bowl game after the 2-10 disaster of a season in 2018.
Flipping (or scrolling) through the preseason expectations is a healthy exercise if you want a proper perspective of Sunday’s announcement that the Cards will head to the Music City Bowl in Nashville to face Mississippi State on Dec. 30 (4 p.m., ESPN).
After last season, had the Louisville football program been a country song, the Cardinals would’ve lost their girl, their dog and their pickup truck.
Athlon Sports said Louisville was, “primed to miss the bowl scene in back-to-back seasons.” SBNation judged that first-year coach Scott Satterfield, “has a low bar to clear . . . just cover the spread a couple of times, and that will be a sign of progress.”
When Satterfield arrived in Louisville, there were eight scholarship offensive linemen. He found no tight ends. He was shocked, but he worked his plan.
And there’s a new tune playing around the Cardinals’ complex: Nashville, here we come.
I asked Satterfield about those low expectations on Sunday, after Louisville’s bowl announcement, and he broke into a smile.
“You sit back and think about it, it’s really incredible what’s been accomplished this year,” Satterfield said. “When I got here last year, right about this time, when we had the press conference, to right now, what a difference a year makes. We’ve come a long way, there’s no question about it. You can ask our players, every one would say the same. We lost a lot of guys that I didn’t even know, really, from the last time they played last fall to when we started spring ball. Twenty guys who were not a part of our team this year. So there was a lot of turnover, a lot of change, but to be able to win seven is incredible.”
The Cardinals didn’t just get bowl eligible, they won 7 games in the regular season, five of them in the ACC, two of those against teams who were nationally ranked at some point. Satterfield was rewarded with the ACC Coach of the Year award for his efforts.
“It was a great honor,” Satterfield said of the award. “I grew up in Durham, right there by Duke and UNC and N.C. State and Wake Forest, and as a little kid, you just loved sports and football and playing. I never dreamed that one day I’d be ACC Coach of the Year. It’s an incredible honor for me personally, but it speaks to what our whole staff has been able to do here. . . . Dabo (Swinney) down at Clemson is surely deserving of the award. There’s no question what he’s done. Bronco (Mendenhall of Virginia), there’s a lot of great coaches who could’ve gotten this award, so it’s an honor for me to be recognized in that way. . . . It’s something we can build off of in this program.”
That building will start with trying to figure out a way to beat Mississippi State in the Music City Bowl.
Louisville’s opponent was up in the air for a while. Just after 3 o’clock, national outlets began reporting that Louisville would face Tennessee in the Music City Bowl. But behind the scenes, sources told several outlets that UT and the Gator Bowl had a mutual interest in each other for the game in Jacksonville, Flax, so Mississippi State was moved into the Music City Bowl, Kentucky was bumped from the Gator to the Belk Bowl and UT wound up in Jacksonville.
Regardless, Satterfield says he doesn’t know a great deal about the Cardinals’ bowl opponent. The Bulldogs, however, are no stranger to the program. Mississippi State beat the Cardinals in the last bowl the program played in, the 2017 TaxSlayer Bowl. The Bulldogs also beat Louisville in the NIT and in the women’s Four in the same calendar year.
The Bulldogs salvaged a .500 record when they beat rival Ole Miss 21-20 in their season finale. They’ve won three of their past four after a four-game losing streak in conference play in the middle of the season.
Satterfield said he’s just excited to head back to Nashville. The Cards already played in Nissan Stadium once this season – a victory over Western Kentucky.
“We had a good experience there,” Satterfield said. “It’s a really good venue, a nice stadium, a great city. A lot of entertainment. It’s very close to us, just 2 ½ hours away, so our fans will be able to get down there. And I think it should be a great atmosphere. . . . It should be an awesome week.”
Players will return to campus on Tuesday. Satterfield has been on the road since his team’s regular-season ending loss to Kentucky a little more than a week ago. He said he’s looking forward to getting the players back, and building more positive momentum.
“As coaches, we’ve got to be able to build off this,” he said. “Everybody we’ve talked to all week recruiting, they’re so fired up. All these guys, I think 21 of them, were committed before we played our first game. Now to go back into their homes, having had the year we had, they’re so excited, from what they saw last spring and summer can’t believe it.”
After the year Louisville has had, Satterfield has picked up plenty of believers.
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