I guess Petrino caused all the stupid penalties like too many men on the field, substitution penalties, procedural penalties, etc. He must be pulling the strings from Fayetteville.

i hate the way he treats us like we’re simpletons who don’t understand a thing about the sport and have child-like expectations. the facts remain:

last season, jurich hired the poopkooper and stoked the expectations of the fans by introducing the poopkooper as the coach to take us the national championship.

when the poopkooper showed his true colors and started his glorious winless streak against UK, Uconn and Cuse, Jurich 180-ed: “this is all the fans’ fault!” he said. “If they didn’t have unrealistic expectations, they wouldn’t be so unhappy. besides, most of the discipline issues are the previous coach’s fault, even though there was only one arrest during his entire tenure with the university. he’s also to blame for the lack of talent on the field! once my buddy Steve has had time to work his system, we’ll have real talent on the field, and not these NFL draft picks.”

im tired of jurich belittling and blaming us for the poopkooper’s horrendous coaching job, and we shouldn’t stand for it. I say Jurich fire’s the poopkooper, or we fire ’em both.

I’ve been a UofL football fan since they were giving away tickets at the local convenience stores. To tell me and fans like me that we expect too much? PUH-lease!!!

I expect, at this point in time, to be somewhat competitive in the Big East. I expect to beat teams we are supposed to beat (Syracuse…at the very least). I expect this team to be able to handle themselves better in road games(no more down to the final minute squeakers against teams like Memphis and no more getting run out of the stadium by teams like Pittsburgh who we’ve totally owned this past decade).

No better way to temper fans expectations by claiming you are competing for a National Championship in Year One of the Coach (?) K era. Turn around after the fact and claim you were trying to tell us all along we were never close.

I’m a UofL football fan, I can handle the truth, even better than I can handle disappointment. I’m a fan and always will be. Setbacks are setbacks and these are just young men who want to play football. My life doesn’t revolve around whether this team wins or loses. I don’t like working hard all week and wanting to watch, at the very least, a competitive football game from the local team and end up turning to an SEC game half way through the second quarter because I can’t take any more.

I spent the 70’s and 80’s dating the rather homely cashier at Big Lots. I spent the a good part of the 90’s being winked at by supermodels. I’ve spent the first part of this decade dating Kate Beckinsale and now I’m wondering where the models are and if the cashier at Big Lots still has the same phone number.

….that hasn’t been said here or in the numerous ITV threads about this.

Just frustrating as a fan to have Jurich do a straw-man debate and say that all UofL fans who are upset with Krag think we should go to the Orange Bowl every week.

Supporting the Koach is one thing. Attacking the out-going coach is understandable even if not classy. Blasting the fans to PRAVDESPN is just inappropriate.

If there’s one thing positive about the Krag situation, it’s that there’s no way Jurich is going to bail on the football program in its current state. So as Krags keeps struggling, and as Jurich keeps backing him, our other sports will continue to flourish.

Coach K has never lost FEWER than five games as a head coach of an alleged major football program. That’s the best he’s ever done.

The situation with TJ is tenuous, seems to me. As noted above, all successful people have egos and on occasion those egos get in the way. Jurich let personal feelings get in the way when it comes to this hire; now he’s erected a straw man by blaming the fans. No one likes to come face-to-face with their own failure. That’s why I think our athletic director will be moving on — and I hope to heck I’m wrong. We all know who needs to go, and it isn’t Jurich.

that he (TJ) wanted to find a man who looked at Louisville as a destination. He got exactly what he wanted. Problem was, the fans looked at the program in the state of its recent history.

Looks like Koach saw it as a destination for the program after Howard left….

The thing is this. ALL we heard the Spring after Koach arrived was positives about our team and how excited he was to compete for a national championship. Those quotes are out there. If he is the second coming then how the hell could he not have seen what the state of the team was and started setting expectations PRIOR to the start of season 1.

Putting this on Petrino is total BS. One of the things Petrino was surprised about was that Paul was not considered a candidate to replace him. He said on SEVERAL occasions that Paul was interested in it. Petrino still has a presence here, he worked at the school on two occasions. The fan base was hugely disappointed in Petrino after he left for sure, but hardly surprised.

As read the blog, I could not help but think that TJ was doing what he always has done. Protect his coaches. He did it for Petrino (at least during the Auburn episode) and other coaches there. The man is a good leader, but, good leaders can also be wrong. On another post I brought my thoughts about Koach up and another poster said something that I truly agree with. Koach is going to be here another year minimum.

to buy a top tier coach, but they did what 2nd tier programs did and hired an unproven nobody. Jurich should stay as AD for the job he’s done overall with Louisville sports, but a real man admits a mistake and rectifies it. Boot K at the end of this season and put all the resources available into landing a proven coach who has won at the big-time level and taken teams to bowl games consistently. If Jurich and K are really that close, the latter will understand it’s a business decision and take his medicine like a man. K was clearly not ready for primetime. Hasn’t he proven that in spades over the last 2 seasons? Enough already.

As I see it, there are two extremes here. The “John L. Kragcooper” side says that the situation of the football program is so bad that someone needs to pay. Kragthorpe should be held responsible for the decline of the football program and Jurich for his hire of Kragthorpe. For responsible, read lose their jobs. The “Louisville Fans are Dumb” side believes that this is a natural cycle in the ups and downs of college football and that the fans are ridiculous for expecting consistent, winning football and BCS bowls.

There is an element of truth to both sides, I think. Kragthorpe may indeed be the worst football coach in Louisville since Cooper. Heck, he may not be fit to coach the powder puffs at Sacred Heart, but it would be a colossal mistake to fire him after two years. If UofL wants a top tier coach, they will not get one by being quick to the eject button. Jurich knows this and takes the high road by protecting him. Kragthorpe should (and will) get at least three years, and TJ should be welcomed and embraced at UofL as long as he will stay.

Nevertheless, it is preposterous to suggest that the fans should not expect a good football team. To chasten the fans for their anger at sub-par football (the extent of which has been well-documented here) is preposterous. There is such a thing as righteous anger and only the truest patriots care enough to express it. Healthy (non-violent) fan passion should never be denounced.

Ultimately, our discussions here won’t matter, but the decline in ticket sales will. When the stadium expansion is postponed (mark my words!) due our team’s stock market plunge, changes will be made.

If I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to celebrate it, but seriously, does anyone see our seven recruits turning this around? In the meantime, I will support every player and every play, with the hope that a new camelot will be in the making one or two years hence. Remember, we’ll never have to rebuild the way Schnelly or John L. or Petrino had to. A BCS bid is only a weak conference championship away!