Miami faces Louisville for the first time in seven years next Saturday. Let's see what the Cardinals are all about as we gear up for the Russell Athletic Bowl.
There are so many subplots to this game it will blow your mind. First there's the two everybody talks about; Teddy Bridgewater and Clint Hurtt. Teddy went to Miami Northwestern and split when Randy Shannon got fired. He's gone on to stardom and is expected to be a 1st round pick in the 2014 draft. Clint Hurtt used to be our Defensive Line coach. Ever since he landed at Louisville he's been a thorn in our side, plucking recruits from South Florida away from us. He was also implicated in the NCAA probe because of his relationship with Nevin Shapiro. Somehow he still has a job. There's also the fact that we're likely going to open next season at Louisville since they join the ACC in 2014. There's talk that it might even be a night game on Labor Day. Great.
1. Where they are in the standings/rankings:
Looking at those 25 teams and not seeing Miami listed among them sucks. The only thing that sucks more is seeing FSU at the top. You can also see that FSU and Duke are the only teams that Miami has faced that are still ranked. Miami's defense gave up over 40 points in each game. Louisville only lost 1 game this year and it was to the only decent team they played, UCF. So despite an 11-1 record, they got buried in the rankings and sent to the Russell Athletic Bowl with us. They got here by winning an overtime thriller against Cincinnati 31-24 in the final game of the year. Here's what Cincinnati fans said about Louisville:
From: Down The Drive
These are the plays he's talking about:
That was a 13 yard scramble on 4th and 12 where he dragged a guy for the final 8 yards. Then there was this:
Unreal.
2. What happened the last time Miami played Louisville?
From the Associated Press:
This section was pretty hard for me to write. It was such a revelation because I had no idea how many repressed memories I had from this game. After going on youtube I watched the touchdown play that's pictured above, and I almost needed to contact a therapist. I was ready to pick up a doll, point at it, and tell someone, "This is where Louisville touched me". The bolded portion above is pretty spot on too. Although that wasn't swagger on display. That was fake tough.
What's worse is that the picture of Lovon Ponder being stiff-armed the final 20 yards of Mario Urrutia's touchdown is only like the 4th or 5th most embarrassing thing about this game. First you had us stomping on the midfield logo in the pre-game warmups. Then there was Louisville stomping a mud-hole in us and walking it dry during the game. Then you had Louisville jumping up and down on the logo after the game to mock us. To top it all off, Louisville did this without their best running back (Michael Bush), and with their starting quarterback (Brian Brohm) getting injured early in the 3rd quarter. The final score was 31-7, but that doesn't do justice to how thoroughly dominated we were by them. I have some other thoughts on this game but this post started to get so long that it pretty much turned into War and Peace. So all the other stuff about Louisville that I wrote I'm putting together in a separate post that will go up in a couple of more days.
3. Who to be scared of:
Teddy Bridgewater
If you didn't already know how good he is, those gifs above are all you really need to know. He was amazing in high school, and it sucks that he didn't honor his commitment. Al Golden did his best, but Bridgewater didn't feel comfortable sticking with Miami after Randy Shannon got fired. You're lying if you didn't get all butt-hurt whenever he made an amazing play in a Louisville uniform. Having said that, **** this cross dressing *******.
The Louisville version of CaneFreak2001 put this video together prior to the start of this season.
[video=youtube;XxA8zqa6MEg]www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxA8zqa6MEg[/video]
I will not be happy if this guy beats us.
4. Player that will score against us:
DeVante Parker
Junior wideout DeVante Parker grew up in Louisville, and is the go to receiver for Teddy Bridgewater once they get to the redzone. He's 2nd on the team in receptions with 46, 1st in yards with 743, and leads the team in receiving touchdowns with 11. He can score in a lot of different ways. Here's him climbing the ladder for a TD:
And again, this time working the sideline in the back of the endzone:
And finally here he is making something out of nothing by taking a short pass to the house.
I already have visions of a certain safety taking a bad angle, allowing a play just like the one above to unfold next week.
5. Person that will **** you off:
Clint Hurtt
Clint Hurtt was an awful player for us, and then he became an even worse defensive line coach. After being a GA and spending some time at FIU, Randy got Larry Coker to hire him in 2006 after Greg Mark left. Randy kept him on the staff when he became the head coach because he supposedly was a great recruiter. He was so good at recruiting he started taking money from Nevin Shapiro and using it to spend on recruiting visits.
With all the dumb **** he was doing you'd think we would have won more recruiting battles than we did. This guy was our recruiting coordinator and was receiving personal checks from a ponzi schemer.
Unreal. The only way that check could be any more hilarious would be if Nevin had written "Hookers and Blow" in the memo line. And what kind of ******* takes a personal check from a booster anyway? It doesn't get any stupider than that. The fact that he's still employed is what really ****es me off. This was Louisville's AD Tom Jurich when it came out Hurtt would receive a show cause order. Jump ahead to the 2:10 mark, unless you want to listen to this guy talk about soccer facilities.
[video=youtube;ghnxeE67yy8]www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghnxeE67yy8[/video]
LOL at his reaction when he finally gets asked a question about Hurtt. The fact that this guy got us in so much trouble and essentially received no meaningful reprimand at all is a joke.
Favorite Clint Hurtt related Gif:
6. Some guy:
Marcus Smith
This Senior defensive end was named the Defensive Player of the Year for the AAC. He was also the first player from Louisville to be named a 1st team all-american from the FWAA. He's got the 2nd most sacks in all of college football with 12.5 and is 13th in the nation in tackles for loss with 16.5. Needless to say he leads Louisville in both categories. What's crazy is he was recruited to Louisville as a dual threat QB. He even started out at QB when he first arrived, but Charlie Strong moved him to defense after the 1st two weeks of camp. Here's a pretty cool interview he did with Jim Rome a few months ago discussing the transition from offense to defense:
[video=youtube;mQXX24yZSNk]www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQXX24yZSNk[/video]
Miami has only given up a total of 13 sacks all year, so it will be an interesting matchup to keep track of.
7. A couple other guys:
Calvin Pryor & Hakeem Smith
These two guys make up one of the best safety tandems in all of college football. They both have 3 interceptions and were named 1st team all AAC. They're also probably the biggest reason why Louisville ranks 7th nationally in passing defense. Smith is the experienced veteran who can diagnose a play before the quarterback snaps the ball. Pryor is the big hitter of the two, who is 2nd on the team in tackles with 69. Here's Pryor knocking out some guy that plays for UCF:
[video=youtube;zDEEAUMJ0oo]www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEEAUMJ0oo[/video]
8. Official Internet meme for this game:
That Really Rustled My Jimmies
[video=youtube;pele5vptVgc]www.youtube.com/watch?v=pele5vptVgc[/video]
There are so many subplots to this game it will blow your mind. First there's the two everybody talks about; Teddy Bridgewater and Clint Hurtt. Teddy went to Miami Northwestern and split when Randy Shannon got fired. He's gone on to stardom and is expected to be a 1st round pick in the 2014 draft. Clint Hurtt used to be our Defensive Line coach. Ever since he landed at Louisville he's been a thorn in our side, plucking recruits from South Florida away from us. He was also implicated in the NCAA probe because of his relationship with Nevin Shapiro. Somehow he still has a job. There's also the fact that we're likely going to open next season at Louisville since they join the ACC in 2014. There's talk that it might even be a night game on Labor Day. Great.
1. Where they are in the standings/rankings:
Looking at those 25 teams and not seeing Miami listed among them sucks. The only thing that sucks more is seeing FSU at the top. You can also see that FSU and Duke are the only teams that Miami has faced that are still ranked. Miami's defense gave up over 40 points in each game. Louisville only lost 1 game this year and it was to the only decent team they played, UCF. So despite an 11-1 record, they got buried in the rankings and sent to the Russell Athletic Bowl with us. They got here by winning an overtime thriller against Cincinnati 31-24 in the final game of the year. Here's what Cincinnati fans said about Louisville:
From: Down The Drive
Matt Opper said:
These are the plays he's talking about:
That was a 13 yard scramble on 4th and 12 where he dragged a guy for the final 8 yards. Then there was this:
Unreal.
2. What happened the last time Miami played Louisville?
From the Associated Press:
This section was pretty hard for me to write. It was such a revelation because I had no idea how many repressed memories I had from this game. After going on youtube I watched the touchdown play that's pictured above, and I almost needed to contact a therapist. I was ready to pick up a doll, point at it, and tell someone, "This is where Louisville touched me". The bolded portion above is pretty spot on too. Although that wasn't swagger on display. That was fake tough.
What's worse is that the picture of Lovon Ponder being stiff-armed the final 20 yards of Mario Urrutia's touchdown is only like the 4th or 5th most embarrassing thing about this game. First you had us stomping on the midfield logo in the pre-game warmups. Then there was Louisville stomping a mud-hole in us and walking it dry during the game. Then you had Louisville jumping up and down on the logo after the game to mock us. To top it all off, Louisville did this without their best running back (Michael Bush), and with their starting quarterback (Brian Brohm) getting injured early in the 3rd quarter. The final score was 31-7, but that doesn't do justice to how thoroughly dominated we were by them. I have some other thoughts on this game but this post started to get so long that it pretty much turned into War and Peace. So all the other stuff about Louisville that I wrote I'm putting together in a separate post that will go up in a couple of more days.
3. Who to be scared of:
Teddy Bridgewater
If you didn't already know how good he is, those gifs above are all you really need to know. He was amazing in high school, and it sucks that he didn't honor his commitment. Al Golden did his best, but Bridgewater didn't feel comfortable sticking with Miami after Randy Shannon got fired. You're lying if you didn't get all butt-hurt whenever he made an amazing play in a Louisville uniform. Having said that, **** this cross dressing *******.
The Louisville version of CaneFreak2001 put this video together prior to the start of this season.
[video=youtube;XxA8zqa6MEg]www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxA8zqa6MEg[/video]
I will not be happy if this guy beats us.
4. Player that will score against us:
DeVante Parker
Junior wideout DeVante Parker grew up in Louisville, and is the go to receiver for Teddy Bridgewater once they get to the redzone. He's 2nd on the team in receptions with 46, 1st in yards with 743, and leads the team in receiving touchdowns with 11. He can score in a lot of different ways. Here's him climbing the ladder for a TD:
And again, this time working the sideline in the back of the endzone:
And finally here he is making something out of nothing by taking a short pass to the house.
I already have visions of a certain safety taking a bad angle, allowing a play just like the one above to unfold next week.
5. Person that will **** you off:
Clint Hurtt
Clint Hurtt was an awful player for us, and then he became an even worse defensive line coach. After being a GA and spending some time at FIU, Randy got Larry Coker to hire him in 2006 after Greg Mark left. Randy kept him on the staff when he became the head coach because he supposedly was a great recruiter. He was so good at recruiting he started taking money from Nevin Shapiro and using it to spend on recruiting visits.
With all the dumb **** he was doing you'd think we would have won more recruiting battles than we did. This guy was our recruiting coordinator and was receiving personal checks from a ponzi schemer.
Unreal. The only way that check could be any more hilarious would be if Nevin had written "Hookers and Blow" in the memo line. And what kind of ******* takes a personal check from a booster anyway? It doesn't get any stupider than that. The fact that he's still employed is what really ****es me off. This was Louisville's AD Tom Jurich when it came out Hurtt would receive a show cause order. Jump ahead to the 2:10 mark, unless you want to listen to this guy talk about soccer facilities.
[video=youtube;ghnxeE67yy8]www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghnxeE67yy8[/video]
LOL at his reaction when he finally gets asked a question about Hurtt. The fact that this guy got us in so much trouble and essentially received no meaningful reprimand at all is a joke.
Favorite Clint Hurtt related Gif:
6. Some guy:
Marcus Smith
This Senior defensive end was named the Defensive Player of the Year for the AAC. He was also the first player from Louisville to be named a 1st team all-american from the FWAA. He's got the 2nd most sacks in all of college football with 12.5 and is 13th in the nation in tackles for loss with 16.5. Needless to say he leads Louisville in both categories. What's crazy is he was recruited to Louisville as a dual threat QB. He even started out at QB when he first arrived, but Charlie Strong moved him to defense after the 1st two weeks of camp. Here's a pretty cool interview he did with Jim Rome a few months ago discussing the transition from offense to defense:
[video=youtube;mQXX24yZSNk]www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQXX24yZSNk[/video]
Miami has only given up a total of 13 sacks all year, so it will be an interesting matchup to keep track of.
7. A couple other guys:
Calvin Pryor & Hakeem Smith
These two guys make up one of the best safety tandems in all of college football. They both have 3 interceptions and were named 1st team all AAC. They're also probably the biggest reason why Louisville ranks 7th nationally in passing defense. Smith is the experienced veteran who can diagnose a play before the quarterback snaps the ball. Pryor is the big hitter of the two, who is 2nd on the team in tackles with 69. Here's Pryor knocking out some guy that plays for UCF:
[video=youtube;zDEEAUMJ0oo]www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEEAUMJ0oo[/video]
8. Official Internet meme for this game:
That Really Rustled My Jimmies
[video=youtube;pele5vptVgc]www.youtube.com/watch?v=pele5vptVgc[/video]
