When you’re tailgating in your backyard and counting down the days until the Cardinals play football again.
Spread check (football): Louisville by 14.
A reminder that the College Football Playoff Rankings show won’t be on at its usual time of 7 p.m. Instead, the rankings will be revealed on ESPN between the Kentucky/Michigan State and Duke/Kansas games. Should be around 9:10 p.m. or so.
I think the Cards check in at No. 5, but let’s try not to get too high or too low regardless of what happens. Unless we’re worse than five. If we’re worse than five then we riot.
But seriously, there’s a guaranteed loss ahead of us and several scenarios at play that weren’t available a week ago. We’re in the great game now, and the great game is terrifying.
People continue to believe that Louisville has the best chance of any team in college football to take down Alabama.
1. Louisville: Whenever you have a quarterback of Lamar Jackson‘s caliber, you have a puncher’s chance. His 46 total touchdowns speak for themselves. His speed and quickness would give Alabama’s front seven fits, and his ability to move the ball downfield through the air would put added stress on a secondary that’s somewhat susceptible to the deep ball. Think of Jackson as Cam Newtonand Louisville as the 2010 Auburn Tigers. Newton got the credit, but Michael Dyer was a productive running back, and while that defense wasn’t incredibly talented, it was opportunistic. With Louisville, there’s no looking past Brandon Radcliff, who is averaging 7.2 yards per carry, and there’s no discounting a defense that ranks in the top 25 in sacks and has forced 22 turnovers, which is four more than Alabama.
Let’s stop speculating and put all the theories to the test. Pretty simple.
U of L football fanatic Rick Pitino used part of his postgame press conference last night to ether the announcing from the Wake Forest game Saturday night.
Louisville fans in the New York area might think seriously about attending the Heisman Award Dinner and Gala on Dec. 12. I’m guessing the Cardinals will be discussed more than in years past. Here’s how you can get tickets.
A former Northwestern basketball player is suing the school and alleging some pretty shady ish.
“Shady, dirty, and underhanded” Behavior
The suit states that NU staff berated the nationally recruited basketball player and put Johnnie in an “internship” under which he worked as a janitor instead of permitting him to train and play with his teammates. The school also pressured him to sign a blank “Roster Deletion” form by which he would be “voluntarily withdrawing” from the team, the suit states, even though Johnnie did not want to leave Northwestern.
The complaint also alleges that unknown individuals within Northwestern falsified timecards in an attempt to create misconduct as grounds for taking away Johnnie’s athletic scholarship (going so far as to even misspell his name on one such timecard), and even asked about his willingness to accept a cash payment to “go away,” among other things.
Amid Northwestern’s tactics, Johnnie reached out to multiple Division I basketball programs and received uniform responses: they would bring Johnnie onto their program if he could play right away, according to the lawsuit. Because Johnnie could not play right away due to the anticompetitive rules, the schools would not accept him.
“This case is a prime example of the catch-22 that student-athletes are forced into,” Berman said. “And while NCAA-member universities play fast and loose with the readily available athletic talent they recruit, there are real futures on the line, and real student-athletes are suffering because of these systemic, overbearing regulations that take away their options.”
The suit states that Johnnie no longer has an athletic scholarship and no longer plays Division I basketball. Instead of pursuing his dream of playing professional basketball after graduation, he is forced to train on his own in an effort to keep up his skills honed through years of competitive basketball.
Graduation success rate for Louisville student-athletes has risen 17 percent in the last 12 years, which is good. In case you were wondering.
V.J. King knows he’s going to make a lot of mistakes early on in his Cardinal career, which is why he’s leaning on the team’s veterans for help. It’s working so far.
Another thing that needs to be factored into the CFP formula, in my opinion.
Yardage Differential (per game)
+298 Louisville
+238 Ohio St
+232 Alabama
+220 Michigan
+175 Clemson
+140 Washington
+87 Wisconsin
+41 PSU
— Pick Six Previews (@PickSixPreviews) <a href="
Yardage Differential (per game)
+298 Louisville +238 Ohio St +232 Alabama +220 Michigan +175 Clemson +140 Washington +87 Wisconsin +41 PSU
Is being a conference champion unofficially a pre-requisite for making the College Football Playoff? This year will tell us yes or no.
Houston QB Greg Ward Jr. is pretty banged up, but should be good to go for Thursday night’s game.
A viewing option for those of you watching the game in Louisville:
This Thursday Night come out to Somewhere Restaurant & Bar & support the PFF & watch both CARDS Game! 15% of Sales go to the PFF 3pm-12am RT pic.twitter.com/TvIXHC8yT6
— Petrino Family Fnd. (@PetrinoFamFnd) <a href="
This Thursday Night come out to Somewhere Restaurant & Bar & support the PFF & watch both CARDS Game! 15% of Sales go to the PFF 3pm-12am RT pic.twitter.com/TvIXHC8yT6
Tom Fornelli of CBS makes the case for Louisville being No. 2 in the new CFP rankings.
2. Louisville 9-1 (4): My formula loves Louisville. It may consider Alabama the best team in the country, but it wants to have Louisville’s babies. All season long, my formula has had Louisville ranked higher than in any other polls, and even after the loss to Clemson, the Cardinals fell from No. 2 in these rankings to No. 5 … a full 10 spots ahead of the Clemson team it had just lost to.
And now the Cardinals have climbed back up to No. 2, though it had nothing to do with Clemson’s loss, it just took advantage of the Michigan and Washington losses. Truth be told, Clemson’s loss actually hurt Louisville a bit just because it hurt a strength of schedule that was already weak.
Which brings me to the point I wanted to make about Louisville.
While my formula loves it, the College Football Playoff committee doesn’t.
Now, it’s entirely possible that when the new CFP rankings come out on Tuesday night, Louisville will be in the top four, but I don’t think that’ll be the case. I believe that loss to Clemson will keep the Tigers ahead of the Cardinals, and the truth is, I have a hard time arguing it should be the other way around.
I just have to believe that the only way Louisville reaches the playoff is if Clemson loses to Wake Forest this weekend, because it has no shot of getting in unless it wins the ACC. This is a Louisville team with a 43-point win over Florida State, and the most exciting player on the planet in Lamar Jackson, but it won’t have the resume it needs to get past not being the ACC champion.
Beating Houston this week would help matters a bit, but Houston’s stock has taken a hit in recent weeks as well, and right now Louisville’s second best win is probably Duke. That’s simply not enough to get the job done.
In other words, Wake Forest is going to have more fans than it’s ever had before this weekend.
State of the U (Miami) has Louisville at No. 1 in its new ACC power rankings.
CBS’ Jerry Palm predicts that U of L will be No. 5 in tonight’s rankings.
And finally, R&R is live from the Troll Pub today from 3-6 talking about last night’s win over Bill and Mary as well as the new CFP rankings. Listen here.
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Spread check (football): Louisville by 14.Campus Insiders’ weekly rankings of the best coaches in college football has Bobby Petrino up a spot to No. 3.
