By the time the Louisville Cardinals start pummeling Pittsburgh Saturday night, college football will have at least one less unblemished team.
Oregon and Washington have an earlier appointment that afternoon in Seattle, which means there will be no more than 10 perfect records among the Power Five conferences by day’s end. A week later, Penn State visits Ohio State, which will be another battle of unbeatens provided the Buckeyes take care of business against Purdue in the interim.
Inevitably, inexorably, the cast of contenders for college football’s championship playoff will condense and the annual politicking will commence. With a post-season pie divided into only four slices that really matter, any school with a plausible claim will lobby near the top of its lungs to be included.
Could Louisville be one of them? Darn right.
Saturday’s 33-20 beatdown of Notre Dame gave a record crowd both validation and euphoria, confirming its belief in Jeff Brohm even sooner than had seemed possible with a statement that resonated nationally. After years of turmoil and disappointment in its signature sports, here was catharsis and celebration on a network stage. Here was Louisville shaking down the thunder in the faces of the Fighting Irish.
The Cards jumped 11 spots in the AP poll released Sunday, from No. 25 to No. 14 (and from No. 25 to No. 15 in the AFCA Coaches Poll), a remarkable leap this late in the season for a team that had been unranked only two weeks earlier. Moreover, UofL’s remaining schedule could be conducive to further upward mobility.
According to ESPN analytics, the Cards should be solid favorites in five of the six games left in their regular season — all but a Nov. 18 game at Miami. Spared Atlantic Coast Conference stress tests against Clemson, Florida State, and North Carolina, the Cards have reached their season’s midway mark worthy of wondering whether they might run the table.
“Once you win a game like that, the bar goes from here up to here,” Brohm said Saturday night at L&N Stadium, raising his right hand from eye level to high above his head.
When you win a game like that, dominating on both sides of the line of scrimmage against a venerable brand name like Notre Dame, a team is entitled to elevate its expectations and incentivized to invest the time and perspiration to realize its potential. As a season progresses, motivation can be as much a difference-maker as talent.
Granted, this is not a great Notre Dame team. Transfer quarterback Sam Hartman, who was intercepted three times and fumbled twice Saturday night, is the same guy who committed six turnovers on the same field for Wake Forest last fall. The Irish proved incapable of protecting him from Louisville’s pass rush or alleviating some of that pressure with a productive running game.
Defensively, Notre Dame had as hard a time chasing Louisville’s Jawhar Jordan as it had Ohio State’s TraVeyon Henderson, widely considered the top running back prospect in the 2024 NFL Draft. (Jordan carried 21 times for 143 yards, including touchdown runs of 45 and 21 yards.)
Though Saturday’s game was technically an upset, it looked more like a mismatch.
"The statement we made tonight is that we can compete with anybody, and, no matter who we play, we give our best effort every time,” UofL linebacker TJ Quinn said. “We showed the nation what we can do, and we're just going to keep going from here."
Though there are three ranked teams still on their schedule — Duke, Miami and Kentucky — it’s doubtful the Cards will have another national platform to raise their profile during the regular season. If they are to qualify for the playoff, they will likely need a perfect record, an ACC Championship, and as much coast-to-coast chaos as college football can muster.
When Cincinnati infiltrated the playoff following the 2021 season, it did so as the last unbeaten team in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Louisville might need a similar scenario if it is to overcome the cachet of so-far unbeaten bluebloods such as Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and USC, to say nothing of its unblemished conference rivals, Florida State and North Carolina.
Still, it’s heady stuff to be contemplating playoff possibilities in Brohm’s first season as Louisville’s homecoming king. He has raised the bar, lifted the spirits, and given UofL fans grounds to imagine greater days to come. Wherever things go from here, Brohm has delivered something worth savoring.
