FanPost

Pants on the Ground

Thank you Larry Platt for the entertaining song. The chorus pretty much sums up my excitement for the Louisville football program since December 9th, 2008. Coach Strong’s time as the Cardinals lead man has been an almost completely pant-less journey so far, and I’m sure I’ll be singing the song well past the last day of the recruiting season.

In about one month, Charlie Strong has instilled excitement and hope with his coaching, not just with inspirational books and Ft. Knox field trips, but with his own enthusiasm and passion for the game of football. Coach Strong is the Terry Tate of Adidas… so move over Reebok, there’s a new sheriff in town.

Let me break this down for you in just the areas of recruiting based on Rivals.com (I’m sure the stats will improve for 2010 before I publish this post in a few moments):

Year Team Rank Conf Rank* # of Recruits Avg Stars Team Points
2002 59 3 (5) 23 2.39 970
2003 35 1 (2) 31 2.39 1303
2004 64 5 (6) 24 2.13 222
2005 45 3 28 2.59 541
2006 34 2 25 2.92 975
2007 41 4 18 3.06 845
2008 55 6 26 2.59 378
2009 76 7 29 2.31 214
*2010 46 3 25 2.56 659



* Conference Rank was based upon Louisville's current conference that year. 2004 was the last year in CUSA. The ranking compared to current Big East schools for 2002-2004 is listed in parenthesis.

I find it difficult to refrain from posting about every new 3-star or higher recruit and from who we are stealing them away, so I'm going to wait until after the class finalizes to post my full report. We are moving back to where we need to be, and looking at the non-Kragthorpe era recruits, I can imagine Louisville’s recruiting rankings will rise higher than they were even under Petrino. So no thanks, Mr. Platt, I will not pick my pants up until this wonderful madness ends!