By Conner Farrell —

March is finally here, and with much of the attention drawn to the men’s and women’s basketball teams as they prepare to make some noise in their respective tournaments, an interesting development is unfolding for the football team behind the scenes.

Louisville recently held its spring showcase on March 7. Under new leadership, the program elected to have that open practice as opposed to an annual spring game. This demonstrated not only a renewed focus on instilling the new X’s and O’s on the field, but also a shift in the culture of the team as a whole.

A story featured in The Athletic detailed first-hand accounts of how first-year head coach Scott Satterfield is changing the Cards’ environment. Bruce Feldman’s feature showed exactly what was going on in the past and what this new regime is doing to change old ways.

“The eye opening moment is once I’d gotten hired and three days later, you come talk with some people,” Satterfield told The Athletic. “I was the only one here. Talk to a secretary or some other people in the building and start asking some questions. And you’re like, ‘Really? That’s what was happening? Wow.’ Just the fact that the players didn’t know where my office was up here. They’re never been down here on the second floor. I’m thinking, ‘Really?’ They never came down here on this end of the hall.”

Over the last five seasons, players were unaware of where the coaching staff offices were within the facilities at Cardinal Stadium. Undoubtedly, this created a disconnect.

In addition, alienation between local high school coaches and Louisville’s football program has been made well-known in past years.

In the last weekend of February alone, Satterfield opened up the practice facilities to 200 high school coaches from across the country.

“I didn’t know Scott at all,” co-defensive coordinator Cort Dennison said. “But if you were to ask anyone in this profession about Scott Satterfield, there’s not one person who will say a negative thing about him. This is a very tight-knit profession. They’re people I trust. That made this very easy.”

These actions taken within the first couple months shed light on the 180-degree makeover that is underway, and how positivity may produce wins in the 2019 season.

“We’re letting everybody in the building know, ‘Hey, let’s focus on the positive stuff.’ It’s a mindset,” Satterfield said. “If you speak what you speak, a lot of times you speak it into existence. If you’re talking negative stuff all of the time, guess what? There’s going to be some bad stuff. Let’s be positive, and eventually it’s gonna start happening.”

As summer practices will soon arrive for the team to work on the gridiron, this new mindset for the program will be ongoing 24/7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can follow the Louisville Cardinal on Twitter @thecardsports.

Photos by Taris Smith / The Louisville Cardinal