By Charlie Leffler
Cards may have thrown away opportunity
It was embarrassing but now it’s over. It ended not with a battle but with a yawn. Though there are still games to play, the season of high expectations ended on Saturday against TCU.
It was a season of so much potential, yet it washed down the drain with the persistent October rain.
Nothing can now bring back the hopes and dreams that this year’s Louisville football team was endorsed with before the season began.
Prospects of a BCS bid and a Heisman winner went out the window in the loss to Kentucky. A high national ranking bit the dust at Colorado State. Then with TCU, the Cardinals lost any chance of redeeming a season of underachievement.
Regardless of how they finish the season, this year’s football team will most likely go down in the books as the most disappointing in school history. Never before has there been a U of L team that had so much potential and did so little with it. Yet, this year’s team will not be known as a team that played bad, but a team that squandered the opportunity to become something special because they already thought that they were.
Against TCU, the boos came raining down on the field early in the first quarter. The fans derision was not because of the inadequacy of play, (Lord knows, any long-standing Louisville football fan has seen their share of bad play), but what the fans cannot stand is a complete lack of effort.
One U of L fan grew so frustrated that he rushed to the wall surrounding the field, removed every article of clothing with a Cardinal logo, (hat, jacket and shirt) threw them away and stormed from the stadium.
However he was not alone in his exit. At 17-0, the fair-weather fans started heading out. At 24-0, many of diehard fans left. At 31-0 some media personnel left. Then at 38-6 the players probably wanted to leave, but that would have been impossible because they hadn’t shown up in the first place. While not all of the players fall into this category, football is still a team sport. The Cardinals need to understand that they are not eleven individuals but one team that lives or dies by the effort of the unit as a whole.
Now this team has nothing left to play for except pride. A conference championship may have now slipped beyond their grasp. National recognition (at least in a positive manner) is no longer even a remote possibility.
These young men have nothing left to play for but themselves and respect. They need to take a long hard look in the mirror and make a decision between two choices. They can be remembered as a team that found themselves and gave everything they had for every moment of the game, or else they can go down in history as the team that threw so much away.
