From the article:

"To understand the fans and the Louisville people, you must understand the University. The University of Louisville, especially since World War II, was designed to serve non-traditional college students. UL was a commuter school. It attracted adults with jobs and children and responsibilities outside of beer bongs and Frisbee golf. It attracted racial minorities unwelcome elsewhere, part-time students, residents finishing degree programs begun elsewhere and those sampling secondary education, perhaps the first in their family to do so. Those students don't typically impress U.S. News and World Report.

The University of Louisville wasn’t operating to attract national merit scholars and tenured professors earning $150,000 a year who spend only a fraction of their time in the classroom while they work on their fifth book no one has read. UL served the 34-year-old working mother of two who wants to complete her degree in order to earn a few thousand more dollars a year at work to support her family. That purpose is every bit as noble as the breathtaking research occurring at Duke or Georgia Tech.

The Louisville fans I’ve met, the Louisville people I’ve met, are representative of their University: good, decent, real, down-to-earth, easy-going, unpretentious, regular working people who love their Cardinals. No silver spoons here. No Reeds or Chivingtons or Garlands or Jaspers among this group. Lots of Marks and James and Franks and Tammys who love their Cardinals and exist in large enough numbers that Louisville will posses one of the biggest fan bases upon entering the ACC. UL won’t be another BC or Wake or Georgia Tech or Miami – ACC schools with fan-bases so tiny as to embarrass the conference by their (lack of) attendance at championship games and bowls.

The academic mission and clout of the University of Louisville has changed dramatically since its 1950’s-1980s commuter school roots. You can read more about that here. The Cardinals’ successful athletic programs and the pride they’ve instilled in the University have been a major catalyst into transforming UL from a much scoffed-at commuter school to an ascending urban research institution that's now a destination for top students across the country.

For the ACC fans who desired West Virginia be invited to the conference a year ago, contrast my portrait of Cardinals fans with Mountaineer fans who are universally regarded as the most unruly, white-trashy, downright dangerous fans in college sports (all apologies to Alabama fans). My chuckoliver.net colleague Ingram Smith has said WVU is the only road game he would never attend as a fan due to the horror stories he’s heard about ‘Eer fan behavior. Remember this about West Virginia: it’s greatest and most well-known athletic tradition is burning couches.

You are the company you keep. A conference is a brotherhood. The people of West Virginia and barbaric Mountaineer fans were a major obstacle to the school’s invitation to a better conference and an absolute deal-breaker for ACC membership."




Why The ACC will Love Louisville

Great article, very informative writer.