Make-or-Break Year Approaching for Louisville's Steve Kragthorpe

(Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

When Louisville Athletic Director Tom Jurich turned to good friend Steve Kragthorpe to take over as the head coach of the Cardinals' football program back in January of 2007, the basketball-minded school had been experiencing a renaissance of sorts on the gridiron.

Under then head coach Bobby Petrino, the Cardinals were perennial contenders in a much improved Big East, and were fresh off of a season in which they won the conference championship and beat Wake Forest to capture the Orange Bowl, the school's first and only BCS bowl win.

All of this success was the culmination of an unprecedeted run in which Louisville made nine straight bowl appearances and moved from Conference USA to the Big East.

Louisville football was by no means an upper-echelon program like the USCs and Michigans of the world, but its sustained success under John L. Smith and Petrino (all under the careful guidance of Jurich) seemed to give Cardinal football fans some sense of hope that their beloved program could reach those lofty heights in the not-too-distant future. 

After Petrino left to become the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Kragthorpe was handed an emerging college football power, with a team that was returning several key players from its Orange Bowl squad, most notably quarterback Brian Brohm. 

At the time, it seemed like the transition would prove to be relatively seamless and that people could expect Louisville football to maintain the prosperity it had experienced for the greater part of the last decade.

However, fast forward two and a half years later, and the current situation in "The Ville" would make one think that the Orange Bowl win was centuries ago.

By virtually all accounts, Kragthorpe's first two seasons as the Louisville coach were very disappointing. 

The 2007 team that opened the season ranked sixth in the country and returned such stars as Brohm and wide receiver Harry Douglas stumbled to a 6-6 mark and failed to make a bowl appearance, the first time Louisville had missed out on the postseason since 1997. 

The following year went no better, as the Cardinals went 5-7, bookended with an humiliating 63-14 loss to Rutgers in the season finale.

Louisville's lack of success under Kragthorpe has left an understandably bitter taste in the mouths of Cardinal football fans, and many have become disillusioned with the direction of the program, questioning where all the progress of years' past went, seemingly in the blink of an eye.

In the search for answers and explanations for Louisville's perplexing struggles, the proverbial finger of sports radio, blogs, and message boards have essentially held one man responsible for the decline—Steve Kragthorpe.

While it may seem slightly unfair to blame a single person for the shortcomings of an entire program, the calls for Kragthorpe's ousting certainly have some degree of merit.

His record while at Louisville has been an unimpressive 11-13, especially when considering the 41-9 mark that Petrino posted in his four seasons at the helm. 

There has been an astounding amount of turnover with the Cardinals' coaching staff in the past couple seasons. 

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