08-13-2008, 07:41 PM
All of this won't amount to anything if we stink like last year, but I am pleased to hear that that team has a fire in practice but gets along so far. Losing can change that fast, but I don't think the team was ever very together last season. We have a schedule to pick up wins over last year's 6-6 in my opinion. We should know after a few games how much of an impact we'll have in league play this year. I think it could be a large amount, at least compared to most teams picked to finish 2nd to last in their league.
View from inside Cards is a bit rosier
August 13, 2008
A warning. This column might change the way you look at the state of the University of Louisville football program. At the very least, it might give you a glimpse through a perspective you have not had -- the eyes of its players.
The team's offseason has been littered with dismissals and departures, arrests and second-guesses.
"We've had so many things ... that you'd think we'd be in shambles right now," senior center Eric Wood said.
Plenty of people do. The Cardinals have been picked to finish next-to-last in the Big East Conference.
"You hear people say, 'Oh, U of L football is falling apart at the seams,' " senior quarterback Hunter Cantwell said. "But ... "
And it's what comes after this pause that's important.
"I would hear that stuff, but then you show up at 6 a.m. for a summer workout, and you see everybody on the team upbeat and smiling," Cantwell continued. "And the picture you'd see every day is the complete opposite of what you hear people saying. So I just shrug all that stuff off, because I know what it looks like on the inside."
On the inside, reports from practice are that there are enough skirmishes going on to fill a card for mixed martial arts. But the blows don't follow into the locker room.
"This is the closest team I've been around," Wood said. "There isn't a single person on this team that I believe is in a feud with anybody else. And while we've had scuffles at practice, at the end of the day we're a team."
Chemistry is one of the oldest sports clichés. Although most great teams have it, a lot of bad ones do, too. At the same time, it's not necessarily a given, and certainly it's a trait that, for whatever reason, last year's U of L team did not possess.
Although many players credit this summer's hard times with pulling them closer together, last season showed that hard times also can pull things in the other direction.
So this is significant: The credit for this team banding together rather than splintering apart, in the estimation of its players, lies with head coach Steve Kragthorpe and his staff.
"It says wonders about what these coaches have done with this team," Wood said.
Summer conditioning runs in the predawn hours were done as a team, not by position units. Players participated in projects off the field and built a Habitat for Humanity house, and a quarter of the team participated in a study of the spiritual book, "The Purpose Driven Life."
"Even that," Wood said, "a lot of people wanted to poke fun at that situation and say different things. But it was completely voluntary, and that so many guys would want to get together at a not-so-convenient time and open up like that says a lot about the kind of guys we have on this team."
U of L's players heard a lot of people -- fans, media, classmates -- taking shots at their program. But then they saw a teammate, Trent Guy, become the target of actual gunshots. Nineteen of them, Guy says. And he lived. And he's on the practice field, about to resume play next month. Another unifying influence. Another dose of perspective.
None of this says much about what the team's win-loss record will be. This team still has plenty of issues to address. But dysfunction isn't one of them.
"And that," Cantwell said, "is a huge, huge deal."
Reach Eric Crawford at (502) 582-4372 or ecrawford@courier-journal.com.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs...002/SPORTS
View from inside Cards is a bit rosier
August 13, 2008
A warning. This column might change the way you look at the state of the University of Louisville football program. At the very least, it might give you a glimpse through a perspective you have not had -- the eyes of its players.
The team's offseason has been littered with dismissals and departures, arrests and second-guesses.
"We've had so many things ... that you'd think we'd be in shambles right now," senior center Eric Wood said.
Plenty of people do. The Cardinals have been picked to finish next-to-last in the Big East Conference.
"You hear people say, 'Oh, U of L football is falling apart at the seams,' " senior quarterback Hunter Cantwell said. "But ... "
And it's what comes after this pause that's important.
"I would hear that stuff, but then you show up at 6 a.m. for a summer workout, and you see everybody on the team upbeat and smiling," Cantwell continued. "And the picture you'd see every day is the complete opposite of what you hear people saying. So I just shrug all that stuff off, because I know what it looks like on the inside."
On the inside, reports from practice are that there are enough skirmishes going on to fill a card for mixed martial arts. But the blows don't follow into the locker room.
"This is the closest team I've been around," Wood said. "There isn't a single person on this team that I believe is in a feud with anybody else. And while we've had scuffles at practice, at the end of the day we're a team."
Chemistry is one of the oldest sports clichés. Although most great teams have it, a lot of bad ones do, too. At the same time, it's not necessarily a given, and certainly it's a trait that, for whatever reason, last year's U of L team did not possess.
Although many players credit this summer's hard times with pulling them closer together, last season showed that hard times also can pull things in the other direction.
So this is significant: The credit for this team banding together rather than splintering apart, in the estimation of its players, lies with head coach Steve Kragthorpe and his staff.
"It says wonders about what these coaches have done with this team," Wood said.
Summer conditioning runs in the predawn hours were done as a team, not by position units. Players participated in projects off the field and built a Habitat for Humanity house, and a quarter of the team participated in a study of the spiritual book, "The Purpose Driven Life."
"Even that," Wood said, "a lot of people wanted to poke fun at that situation and say different things. But it was completely voluntary, and that so many guys would want to get together at a not-so-convenient time and open up like that says a lot about the kind of guys we have on this team."
U of L's players heard a lot of people -- fans, media, classmates -- taking shots at their program. But then they saw a teammate, Trent Guy, become the target of actual gunshots. Nineteen of them, Guy says. And he lived. And he's on the practice field, about to resume play next month. Another unifying influence. Another dose of perspective.
None of this says much about what the team's win-loss record will be. This team still has plenty of issues to address. But dysfunction isn't one of them.
"And that," Cantwell said, "is a huge, huge deal."
Reach Eric Crawford at (502) 582-4372 or ecrawford@courier-journal.com.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs...002/SPORTS