Wednesday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—The CJ’s Cam Teague highlights five things we learned from Louisville football’s fall camp.

—Tuesday’s Mike Rutherford Show is available on podcast here. We only dropped off the air once, which is progress. Thankfully, the podcast didn’t miss anything.

—The Cardinal Caravan returned to Captain’s Quarters Tuesday night, and “The Alliance” was the major topic of conversation.

“We’re grateful and happy to be in the ACC to begin with,” UofL vice president of athletics Vince Tyra said. “To be in a power five conference, and then to be aligned with two other power five conferences bodes well for us. I can see where this is going to be very valuable in a lot of legislative things like sports wagering, name, image and likeness. There’s other factors, I think we’re talking about legislation. The fact is we’re so reactive as membership inside the NCAA and this is one way to flip the script and be more proactive.”

The moves by the leagues comes after the SEC added Big XII powers Texas and Oklahoma. Football generally fuels conference realignment.

“I want what’s best for college football and if that means creating an alliance to help college football then I’m all for it,” UofL head football coach Scott Satterfield said. “It is a time in college football, a lot of change, a lot of things are happening and it seems like it kind of goes in cycles and we’re in that cycle right now. We’ll see what happens with this over the next couple of years because I think as we sit here today. Obviously not anything is going to happen today or next year but it can happen pretty fast, as we know.”

Along with future football scheduling, the commissioners of the three conferences also mentioned scheduling in men’s and women’s basketball, including preseason and midseason matchups.

“Well I think it remains to be seen, but it’s certainly going to make sure that the three leagues are protected in terms of what moves forward and what doesn’t and it was interesting to see their bullet points,” UofL men’s head basketball coach Chris Mack said.

—State of Louisville has 25 realistic predictions for the 2021 Louisville football season.

—The Atlanta Falcons have released Javian Hawkins, which was something of a surprise.

—It’s that time of the year.

—Meanwhile, 16 of The Athletic’s 20 college football writers believe UK will win fewer than seven games this season.

—The Cardinal Sports Zone crew makes some football season predictions on the latest episode of their podcast.

—The Louisville women’s soccer team returns to action on Thursday when it hosts James Madison at 7:30.

—The Cardinal field hockey team will begin its 2021 season as the No. 5 team in the country.

Louisville in the NFHCA Rankings

• This marks the ninth straight week that Louisville has been ranked among the top five in the nation. Last season, the Cardinals spent all seven weeks in the top five after debuting at No. 2 – the highest ranking in program history – on March 16, 2021. After spending two weeks in that slot, UofL remained in the top five throughout the rest of the season, finishing the year at No. 5. The Cardinals also concluded the 2019 campaign at No. 5.

• The Cards have been ranked among the top 10 for the last 20 weeks spanning back to the 2019 season when they appeared at No. 8 on Sept. 10.

• Louisville has now spent 85 straight weeks in the top 20 in the nation dating back to the 2013 season.

—Louisville Report looks at five intriguing football matchups “The Alliance” could provide for the Cards.

—Mile Run season has returned.

—ESPN’s Bill Connelly writes about how chaos could reign supreme (Insider) over the 2021 college football season.

—Moving forward, The Women’s Cup will likely expand to a larger tournament with more host cities.

—The “Alliance” that was announced yesterday isn’t a real thing.

The whole thing is an NFT, a cryptocurrency, a verbal commitment. In college sports, verbal commitments are worth their weight in gold. Imagine someone in college sports breaking a verbal commitment. We’d need to invent a whole new word. Decommitments, we’d have to call them. Nobody has ever said that word about things that happen in college sports every day.

So there is no enforceable document to keep each other from poaching members, and there was no focus on revenue when creating it .. so .. ummm .. what are we doing here?

—Top Louisville hoops recruit Rodney Rice will attend Louisville Live at Churchill Downs next month.

—The naked baby (who is now a fully clothed man) who appeared on the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” is now suing the band for child pornography.

—Former Card Lucas Dunn hit an inside-the-park grans slam earlier this week.

—Ballermine!

—The Clemson offensive line is ready to be more physical in 2021.

—Blogger So Dear (Wake Forest) takes a stab at previewing the Cards.

—Based on this comment, it’s hard to envision the SEC not moving to a 9-game conference schedule in the very near future.

—247 Sports ranks the opponents on Louisville’s football schedule.

—And finally, Matt McGavic names five Cardinals as fall camp standouts.