LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It was a whirlwind kind of day, the kind of day that makes you wonder why you don’t just pick one thing and cover it well instead of trying to run all over town. Itinerary: get to an NCAA Tournament volleyball match, but dash out during the second set to a head football coach’s introductory news conference. Do some live TV from there and run off quickly to an event in the evening with former players honoring Louisville coach Denny Crum, as he watches via video feed.
All the while, I’m stressed, feeling like I’m missing something at every stop, complaining under my breath about scheduling and logistics and the stupid rain and why am I making myself go to all this?
Then, walking into the office in the rain after it’s all over, insight taps me on the shoulder. Or kicks me in the posterior.
“You idiot,” it says to me. “You were visited by three spirits today. Shut up and listen.”
I guess that’s why I was running without really realizing why. I was supposed to learn something. Or experience it. Or share it. Probably all three.
It wasn’t the Christmas spirit. Maybe it was the spirit of the University of Louisville.
So, yeah, this is one of those hometown columns. But it was a hometown kind of day at U of L. And I need to tell the story, or it’ll keep me up all night.
VOLLEYBALL
The Cardinals’ volleyball team put away Baylor in three sets, which isn’t really news. I keep coming back to these games and knew I had to figure out a concise description of this team. It carries itself like no other team at the university, and like few teams I’ve ever covered.
Not just this season, but last season, too. The Louisville volleyball team takes the court like it knows its own worth, like it knows it has aced the test before the professor ever lays it on the desk.
The Louisville volleyball team celebrates a point in a Sweet 16 win over Baylor.
It plays with joyful confidence. There are smiles. Every match is a joke that only they are in on.
But this team is no joke. These players are really good. The success of this team is far more than smiles and a kills. It’s intense focus and really good preparation.
I missed the post-game news conference. I wasn’t surprised, however, at what coach Dani Busboom Kelly and her players had to say.
“We have a huge amount of trust with the staff and the players,” Busboom Kelly said. “We prep very well and our scout team executes really well, that just gives us a lot of confidence. I feel like we are just three points ahead every match just because of the trust between the staff and the team."
Most of these players experienced a Final Four last year. They dealt with a 5-set thriller before their own match on Thursday in mature fashion. They know about big stages and big moments.
“Dani said at the beginning of the season our motto is, ‘We won't flinch,’” senior All-American Claire Chaussee said. “We have been in these situations. We trust each other, and our staff is doing everything they can before the games to prep us well. It is going to be really exciting if we win on Saturday to get back to the Final Four."
Louisville faces Oregon on Saturday at 4. You should think about going.
I left the KFC Yum! Center thinking it was just a lost opportunity. It was only later on, after listening to a bunch of Louisville basketball players from the 1970s and ‘80s, that the story would be finished.
Read on.
JEFF BROHM
The big story of the day in the city was Jeff Brohm taking over as head football coach. Frankly, I’ve struggled to write about this homecoming. I’ve written a good bit about Brohm. Most of you reading this know him. I mean, really know him. What more do you need to hear? What else is there to say?
But Brohm said something that caught my attention.
Scenes from Jeff Brohm's introduction as Louisville football coach.
“This is not a job to me,” he said. “This has been a way of life for my family since I was born. While in my career, I have coached at many different places, some near and some far, I never really left Louisville. My heart was always here.”
So was his home. He never sold his house. Jeff Brohm does not need a scouting report for how to get U of L football going. He knows the blueprint for what he needs to do like the back of his hand.
“I believe I understand the decades-long mission that this community has had and been built upon: to maintain a championship program,” Brohm said. “I know where this program began, the passion that has driven it, what it has overcome and accomplished, and where it wants to go.”
Start the engines.
Brohm did not come here to get into better position to get the job at Ohio State or Notre Dame. I’m not saying he’ll never leave, but I’m saying if he came here when he could’ve made more money elsewhere, it’s entirely possible that he’ll stay when he could find more fame, or even success, somewhere else.
That’s the spirit (that word again) that chose Louisville as a high school recruit rather than play quarterback for Notre Dame.
U of L’s interim president Lori Gonzalez summed it up well.
“He is not just the coach because he is one of us, that he comes from here. He is the coach because he is exactly who we need at this moment in Louisville.”
I was still trying to puzzle more of that together when it was time to go, to an event at the Frazier Museum scheduled months ago, for Hall of Fame Louisville basketball coach Denny Crum.
DENNY CRUM
The coach was supposed to be at this event, billed as “Rivalries and Cool Hand Luke: A Night with Denny Crum and Former Players and Coaches.” It promotes a rivalries exhibit at the Frazier Museum.
Unfortunately, Crum’s health prevented him from attending. But many former players were there. Wade Houston, his longtime assistant, was there. And one by one, they stood up, and spoke into a Zoom feed the coach was watching at his home, with his wife Susan.
Former Louisville players honor Denny Crum by holding up rolled-up programs.
They told stories. They shared memories and moments.
Vince Tyra, former Louisville athletics director, was at Crum’s home with him for a time.
“We watched some of the streaming of the event and he loved seeing the former players and hearing their comments,” Tyra said.
Some of them had visited with Crum in recent days. The coach, who has suffered a minor stroke in recent months, does not speak much. That he could express a simple, “I love you,” moved his former players.
Darrell Griffith remembered a game in New Orleans when he wasn’t playing well and the team was getting beat, and Crum took him out. He sat on the bench between assistants Wade Houston and Bill Olsen. At some point, Olsen shouted up to Crum, “Put Darrell back in.” Crum said back down to Olsen, “If Darrell will play defense, he can go back in.”
“He never said a word to me,” Griffith said. “But he made his point.”
These players don’t need many words from their coach now. They just value being in his presence, and all that he has meant to them.
“The beautiful thing about coach Crum, the biggest tribute, is all the players who still live here,” Griffith said. “Think about that. Me and Jerry were the only Louisville players on our team from here. And you’ve got Herb (Crook) he’s from here. Phil (Bond) is from Louisville, but if you look at all the Louisville players who still live here, most are from out of town. And I think that’s the biggest tribute to coach Crum. You had such an impact that players still want to be around. Much love, coach.”
Wiley Brown visited with Crum in his home on Wednesday. He said he still remembers Crum visiting his home in Sylvester, Ga., on a recruiting trip.
“I was out fishing when you came to sign me,” Brown said. “When I got home, all Coach wanted to do was talk about fishing. I just wanted to sign that scholarship so I could go to school. . . Coach, I told you this yesterday, that I love you. And he even said it back, to Rodney (McCray) and me. You really mean a lot to us. Myself, I was raised without a father, but by two strong women, my mother and my grandmother. But my father wasn’t there, and Coach has always been a father figure to me. I appreciate you coach. I love you. And I told you I’d come see you once a week.”
There was a lot of that. They talked about Crum’s style as a coach.
“We always played loose and free,” Griffith said. “We played with energy and joy.”
Those words sound familiar?
That joyful confidence I saw on the volleyball court. I knew I had seen it before. I had seen it from Griffith and Eaves and Brown and Milt Wagner, Kenny Payne, Pervis Ellison, the McCray brothers.
How about that? Four decades later, a group of women is channeling the Cardinals of the 1980s, probably without even knowing it.
Joy to the world. Or at least, to the Louisville corner of it.
Susan Sweeney Crum, Denny’s wife, chimed in with a message at the end of the night.
“Obviously we could not have known that COVID followed by pneumonia followed by another small stroke several months ago would take such a toll,” she said in a message. “Even a week ago, we thought we were a go with some extra time and help downtown. Unfortunately, even that is more than we can muster right now. We are enjoying watching the program online and hearing from his players. He always felt like the players that came into his program were like sons and more than just players, and a bond develops for life. Denny has always been so proud of his guys. . . . Likewise the loyal support he always received from Cardinal fans meant just as much to him, and your passion and love for U of L is always what kept him here. Thank you all for staying faithful to Cardinal basketball. And thank you also for the love and support we feel from you as we navigate our time ahead.”
What kept him here. Those words bounced around in a Brohm-like direction as I got to thinking.
Certainly, I could envision a time in the future when players gathered in a similar fashion to talk about Brohm. At the very least, perhaps he is the guy to bring the continuity that Crum brought to basketball and Schnellenberger to football.
It wasn’t just money that brought Brohm back. Or football. Or even family. But all of them. On the posters they handed out at Brohm’s news conference were the words, “Passion. Family. Tradition.”
Those are pretty cliched terms. But that’s pretty much the glue binding Brohm to Louisville.
I’m not sure I fully got that until I listened to Crum’s former players. Until, at the end of the night, they all held up rolled up programs above their heads while their old coach watched at home.
Past, present, future. I get it spirit. Thanks.
God bless us, every one.
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