NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
By Pat Forde, ESPN.com
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Alabama's spring football game morphed into Woodstock this weekend in Tuscaloosa, with 92,000-plus turning out to hear Nick Saban play a psychedelic guitar rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Or something like that.
The A-Day attendance is a preposterous number, reflective of the mania accompanying Saban's arrival as coach of the Crimson Tide. But attendance doesn't equal right-now relevance.
In 2007 terms, Saban to Alabama was not the most important coaching move of this offseason. Neither was Randy Shannon's elevation at Miami, Dennis Erickson's latest reinvention of himself at Arizona State or Tom O'Brien's migration down the East Coast to North Carolina State.
Dave Klotz/Louisville Athletics
All eyes will be on Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe this fall.It was Steve Kragthorpe to Louisville. Even if "only" 28,000 people -- easily the largest spring game crowd in school history -- watched the Cardinals on Friday night.
Saban, Shannon, Erickson and O'Brien will begin 2007 well south of the national top 10. Kragthorpe and his Cards will be ranked right in that neighborhood.
It isn't every day a guy vaults from Tulsa to the top 10, inheriting the best returning quarterback in the nation and 56 other lettermen from a 12-1 team along the way. That's the luxury Kragthorpe has landed in. And the pressure.
Because Brian Brohm, Louisville's three leading receivers and most of its offensive line return, there is zero time in the honeymoon suite for Kragthorpe. Expectations will call for the Cardinals to compete for a national title right away.
If they fall short, you probably won't see fans shrug and write it off to significant defensive losses from 2006 -- including expected top-10 pick Amobi Okoye. They'll stare at the coach, scrutinizing the differences between him and the surly offensive savant he replaced in Jiffy Lube time.
Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich went after Kragthorpe minutes after Bobby Petrino finally followed through on his annual flirtations with other jobs, leaving for the Atlanta Falcons in January. That followed Jurich's wildly successful hiring M.O.: appoint yourself as a one-man selection committee, identity a single leading candidate and go get him before anyone has time to lament the loss of the last guy.
In truth, Kragthorpe had been Jurich's coach-in-waiting since 2004, when it looked as though Petrino might get the LSU job that Saban abandoned to flop in the NFL. (Interesting what a circular chain reaction this has been.) Petrino's tail-between-the-legs return to the Ville after Les Miles went to LSU simply delayed Kragthorpe's career upgrade until now.
But some Cardinals fans wondered whether their program had grown beyond a rapid-fire raid of Conference USA. Some wanted a higher-profile hire to serve as tangible proof that Louisville football had completed its journey from striver to perennial contender.
It's now Kragthorpe's job to prove he can win big without a big name. And to validate Jurich's normally impeccable instincts.
Know this much: Kragthorpe hasn't been afraid to do things his own way so far, including changing the rules of how the spring game would be played and scored.
Dave Klotz/Louisville Athletics
Brian Brohm threw four interceptions in Louisville's spring game Friday.He set up an offense-vs.-defense game that mostly matched good-on-good, or starters against starters. The result was fairly jarring for Louisville fans accustomed to offense-centric spring ball: The defense won 51-45, picking off Brohm a shocking four times.
That's double the career high for picks in a real college game for Brohm, which prompted a fairly anxious question about the star QB when the spring scrimmage was over.
"Brian did some good things," Kragthorpe said. "The thing you have to understand, Steve Kragthorpe runs this show a little differently. This thing isn't orchestrated so that the offense has success like it's been in the past.
"I want to have the offense out there being competitive, the defense out there being competitive. We were pretty vanilla on offense, pretty vanilla on defense, but you've got to understand: I'm going to let these guys play. It's a little different than it's been in the past."
That answer said a lot -- and not just that Steve Kragthorpe likes to refer to himself as "Steve Kragthorpe." The rest of the message goes beyond a single spring game.
The rest of the message says there is a new sheriff in town and it's time to adjust to that fact. And this sheriff cares about both sides of the ball. He's not necessarily going to get his jollies out of overloading the stat sheet.
If there was any legit criticism of Petrino -- beyond his apparently congenital dishonesty and his general joylessness -- it was a pandering to the offensive side of the ball. Even as a head coach, Petrino was an offensive coordinator at heart: in love with drawing up plays and piling up yards and points.
He was good at it. Kragthorpe might not field a team that confuses, executes and produces like Petrino's, but he has shown signs of caring more than his predecessor about stopping opponents.
The defense will have to be decent at worst, given a schedule that includes at least three significant road challenges: at archrival Kentucky, at West Virginia and at South Florida. Rutgers comes to Louisville to close the regular season on a Thursday night in late November.
After the 2007 season, Kragthorpe can get on with the long-term side of the job, including the daunting task of matching Petrino as a recruiter. But for now, he should have almost everything a coach needs to compete for a national title -- especially a coach who just upgraded out of C-USA.
No current first-year guy has stepped into a better spot than this. Or a more pressurized spot. This is the hire to watch this fall.
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