Monday afternoon Cardinal news and notes

—Louisville received zero votes in the college football preseason coaches poll. Notre Dame (13) is the only Cardinal opponent to appear in the poll, while Pitt, Kentucky, NC State, Miami and Duke all received votes.

—Nick Bowes has been named Louisville’s Deputy Athletic Director and Chief Financial Officer. Bowes will serve as the lead fiscal officer for the athletic department and oversee all finance and business activities, serve as liaison to the university, ULAA board and Board of Trustees, and provide leadership oversight to equipment operations, capital projects, facilities and the UofL Golf Club.

—Jamari Thrash is on the Biletnikoff Award preseason watch list.

—The All Coasts Conference could be coming.

—“The Kentucky Hug” is a very cool local startup taking on the task of centralizing all bourbon tourism experiences into one marketplace, kyhug.com. So locals can now tell non-locals to check that site out instead of trying to act like they know something about bourbon.

—Single match tickets for the upcoming U of L volleyball season are now on sale.

—Now more than ever, college sports are headed down a path paved with TV money (Athletic link).

—Boo.

—All five bowls with Pac-12 tie-ins (Alamo, Las Vegas, Holiday, Sun and LA) have begun discussions about changing to different conference affiliation for the 2024 and 2025.

—The CJ’s Jason Frakes has everything you need to know about some of the biggest high school football programs in town.

—Sam Vecenie’s new top 60 players list for the 2024 NBA Draft does not feature a Louisville Caridnal.

—This is going to be a disaster.

—The stolen body parts scandal discovered at Harvard stretches all the way to Kentucky.

—Damion Lee’s second annual golf scramble at the U of L Golf Club was today. You can support his non-profit by bidding on items at his silent auction here.

—Louisville’s linebackers have been making steady improvement throughout the offseason.

—REAL LIFE CARDINAL FOOTBALL CLIPS:

—A photo galley from Louisville’s third day of fall camp can be found here.

—Matt McGavic has some notes from Sunday’s open practice.

-I went back to watching the quarterbacks and wide receivers during the individual position drills for this practice. The quarterbacks ran a couple mobility and read based drills, and the two that stood out the most in both drills were Jack Plummer and Pierce Clarkson, especially the latter (obviously). The receivers spent time fine tuning their route running, with Jamari Thrash and Kevin Coleman Jr., unsurprisingly, looking the most crisp. In a bit of a surprise, Chris Bell did very well here for his size, and even looked better than a few of the smaller and shiftier wideouts.

-The first seven-on-seven period provided a glimpse of what to come for the rest of the practice. Clarkson looked very decisive and accurate with his throws, while Brady Allen didn’t seem comfortable at all for this segment.

-A quick note for the brief one-on one segment. There was great competition across the board here. Guys like Bell, Johnson, Jamari Thrash and Duane Martin had impressive and difficult catches, while Derrick Edwards III, Trey Franklin and Storm Duck all had interceptions. Iron sharpens iron.

-Now onto the 11-on-11 periods. This was the first practice of fall camp where Plummer looked “mortal,” so to speak. He wasn’t bad per see, but there were more throws that were a tad offline than we had seen in previous practices. It also didn’t help that there were a handful of drops across the board sprinkled throughout camp. This even came during a practice where the offensive line seemed to be doing a good job in pass protection all afternoon.

-Clarkson received a fair amount of reps with the twos and threes today, and it was his best practice to date. He was snappy with both he decision making and release, while consistently putting the ball where it needed to be. His best play actually came from using his legs, where he danced with Ashton Gillotte in the backfield before scrambling and finding Bell in the flats. He also doesn’t have a problem going to his running back as a safety valve, which included a dart to Jawhar Jordan on a route across the middle.

—The competition between Louisville’s wide receivers and DB’s has been intense so far this month.

—A Louisville woman has been crowned Miss Black USA.

—Cherish this man, Tampa.

—The overnight storms produced at least one confirmed tornado in Southern Indiana.

—A number of people are predicting a monster season from Ashton Gillotte. If it happens, the support he receives from his family will be a big part of the reason why.

—There is a clear leader on Louisville’s offensive line.

—Louisville baseball fall camps are right around the corner.

—Male High star Isaac Sowells (2025) enjoyed his latest U of L visit.

—And finally, the Mike Rutherford Show is back from 3-6 this afternoon on The Big X. You can stream it here or by calling (518) 931-1125.