Who Will Be This Era’s Schnellenberger
Posted by frankpos on October 5, 2009
It is time
to go back in time
to 1985
to a high powered coaching combo
like Denny Crum and Howard Schnellenberger– each sporting national championship rings and both among the hottest coaches in the nation
We need another high powered coaching combo
Pitino needs his Schnellenberger…
From Wikipedia:
In 1985 Schnellenberger returned to his hometown to coach another struggling program, the University of Louisville Cardinals, that had 10 losing seasons in the last 12 (including the last six in a row). … tickets were given away by the program.
The situation was so grave at Louisville that officials were considering dropping the football program down to I-AA.
Nonetheless, at his opening press conference, he stunned reporters and fans by proclaiming the program “is on a collision course with the national championship. The only variable is time.”[5][6]
After going 8–24–1 in his first three years, Schnellenberger was able to turn the program around and go 24–9–1 the next three seasons. In 10 years, he led the Cardinals to their second and third bowl games in school history. They won them both, including an unprecedented 34–7 thrashing of the Alabama Crimson Tide in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl, capping a 10–1–1 season and the school’s first-ever appearance in a final poll (11th). The Fiesta Bowl appearance was the school’s first-ever New Year’s Day bowl game.[5]
Although Schnellenberger’s record at Louisville was two games under .500 (largely due to his first three years), he has remained in the good graces of Cardinal fans due to the awful state the program was in when he arrived, as his justly-deserved reputation as a “program builder” – laying the foundation for the program’s subsequent rise to national prominence. The Cardinals went to nine straight bowl games from 1998 to 2006 and were in the national title hunt for much of 2005 and 2006. The Howard L. Schnellenberger Football Complex at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium is named after him; Schnellenberger initially proposed building the on-campus stadium during his tenure at Louisville and is credited with keeping the project alive.[5]
