Tuesday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—Heading into tomorrow’s National Signing Day, Louisville football currently holds 22 commitments from the class of 2021.

—Here’s how Cards in the NFL fared in week 14.

—Marlon Character, who had a terrific season at cornerback for Louisville this year, has announced that he’s foregoing the rest of his college eligibility to take his shot at the NFL.

That one is an awfully big blow for next year.

—Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology for ESPN has Louisville as a 6-seed.

—Rodjay Burns announced on Monday that he won’t be utilizing his extra year of eligibility, and will instead try and kick off his professional career.

—The CJ has everything you need to know about Saturday’s 6A state title game between Male and Trinity.

—Indiana-Purdue has been canceled for a second time, which almost certainly means Rondale Moore’s college career is over.

—Guy’s good.

—John Swofford says the complaints about the ACC title game between Clemson and Notre Dame ring hollow.

—The CJ looks at how Scott Satterfield managed to piece together his 2021 recruiting class in the middle of a pandemic.

—One last victory highlight vid:

—Actors Theatre is bringing “A Christmas Carol” to radio this year.

—Louisville is No. 23 in Gary Parrish’s daily hoops rankings for CBS.

—This is embarrassing, FSU.

—Two ACC games on the docket for this evening:

No. 24 Clemson at Virginia Tech (6:30 p.m./ACC Network)

Georgia Tech at No. 15 Florida State (8:30 p.m./ACC Network

—Watch this for the Alvin Sims breakaway bossing, but turn it off before the last 10 seconds.

—Florida basketball star Keyontae Johnson remains in critical but stable condition after his scary on-court collapse last Saturday.

—Kentucky has hired Rams assistant Liam Coen to be its new offensive coordinator.

—Papa Pass thanks Louisville for the good times.

—Big Red Louie is not worried about the number of Louisville football defectors.

—A hamstring strain could leave DeVante Parker on the sidelines this weekend.

—College basketball scheduling (Athletic link) this season has been a fluid shit show.

“I’m like, oh, boy,” VandeWettering says. “Here we go.”

If the Cardinals were to fall off the slate, the Badgers would have a week without a game, and the immediate consensus with the staff was that it could not afford to waste that amount of time in an already jumbled season. VandeWettering’s first call was to Louisville to assess the timeline. Transparency from Louisville’s end allowed him to start cogitating on Plan Bs, and his first instinct was to ask Northern Iowa to move up the teams’ late December game into the Louisville slot. Northern Iowa was amenable, provided its scheduled game against Richmond, another team experiencing a COVID pause, didn’t happen.

Two things were clear by Saturday morning: The Louisville game wasn’t happening and Richmond was going to be ready for Northern Iowa. “Now we’re in scramble mode,” VandeWettering says. He decided to take a shot with a program, Rhode Island, with whom he’d been discussing a potential game on a different date. VandeWettering had one question: Any chance you can get here to play on Wednesday?

Rhode Island said yes, conditionally: It needed the contract by the end of the day. VandeWettering texted the Badgers assistant coaches that the Rams were a possibility, so they could begin gathering film; before the game was even set, in fact, assistant Joe Krabbenhoft was assigned scouting report duties. From there, VandeWettering reached out to myriad parties — administrators at a football game that day, the chief financial officer, the school’s legal team, the Big Ten regarding television possibilities — to ascertain if this was even possible. After 33 phone calls, a contract was out to Rhode Island with a game guarantee of $45,000 to help offset the charter flight.

“It was a whirlwind,” VandeWettering says. “(Krabbenhoft) was ready to go with the film Saturday and Sunday, and we were into our normal prep from there. It quickly changed from prepping for another red jersey to a blue jersey.”

A couple of days after the 33-call deluge that enabled Wisconsin to trade out nonconference opponents, VandeWettering is cautiously happy. The Louisville game has been rescheduled for Saturday morning at the Kohl Center, and with a goal to get as close to 27 games as possible, quick work from all corners of the school ensured the Badgers stayed on track. “As of right now,” VandeWettering adds, in a coda fit for the season. “It’s only 10 a.m.”

—The Frisco Bowl, which was set to be the first bowl game of the 2020-21 college football postseason, has been canceled.

—And finally, we have to give a shoutout to DePaul, which remains the only power conference men’s basketball team yet to play a game in 2020-21. The Blue Demons have had 10 games canceled or postponed, and just announced Monday night that they are back on pause after a positive Covid test within the program.

On the plus side? The DePaul Blue Demons remain unbeaten.