Kragthorpe at Louisville...here's the story

I'm a UL fan as well as a Tiger (I was band director there in the early 80s after getting my MA from LSU) and although I no longer live in the city, I still follow the Cards pretty closely, contribute to the message boards, etc. When Krags came in at UL, Tom Jurich (the AD) insisted that he keep a few holdovers from Petrino's staff, including one of the two co-defensive coordinators. Well, it turns out that this guy was pretty much a disaster. During Krags' first season, the offense was ranked 6th in the country (Brian Brohm's senior year) but the D was atrocious. With even a mediocre D, the Cards would have won at least three more games and finished something 9-3, and maybe 10-2. As it was, they ended up 6-6 and missed a bowl. The UL fans just crucified Krags (sound familiar?) and the atmosphere around the program was really toxic almost from the first. In addition to the problems with the D, the cupboard was a little bare (Petrino had not done a good job recruiting his last couple of years) and, as some have mentioned, there were some bad apples that needed to be cleaned out as well. (One of the D-backs from Petrino's Orange Bowl team was arrested for armed robbery in the off season, for example.)

After that disappointing first year and the hostile reaction of the fan base, Krags never could seem to get his bearings. Recruiting fell way off (partially due to the fact that he wanted to recruit Texas and the Southwest as he had done at Tulsa, while UL's natural recruiting base is the Deep South, esp. Florida). Krags kept trying to find the right formula, but the situation just got worse and worse. Even the offense regressed over his last two years. I really felt sorry for him; he came into a situation that he thought would be really good and it turned out that there were major problems with the program.

Of course the fans didn't want to hear anything about that...they just didn't understand why the Cards weren't continuing to go to BCS bowl games. By his last year, the fan base was unbelievably hostile, attendance was WAY down, and Jurich had to make a change. (He made a good hire in Charlie Strong.)

I always will wonder how Krags' career would have turned out if the D had been decent his first year and the team had gone to a good bowl. Jurich admitted later that he had contributed to Krags' failure, obviously referring to the fact that he made him take on some of Petrino's coaches instead of letting him bring in his own people. I'm sure Krags would say that he made lots of mistakes, and I honestly don't know how good or bad he might really be as a coach, but there is no doubt that a lot of what happened at UL was not his fault.

The fact that his offense regressed like it did in his last two years is certainly troubling. He actually took on the duties of OC his last season. The production continued to decline but on the few occasions I got to watch the team in '09 I thought the play calling was improved from the year before, and I can't tell how much the fall off was due to coaching and how much was due to lack of talent.

So, bottom line, I'm not sure how much we can read into his failure at UL, given the horrible situation he was in. He did great work at Tulsa, and when he was hired at UL he was considered one of the rising stars in the profession. I'm sure he is still a little shell-shocked by the experience. For what it's worth, I wrote on the UL boards last spring that I was expecting the team to be better this year, no matter who was coach, because there was a bit more talent and, finally, some more depth, especially on the lines. That's not to say that Krags would have done as well as Strong did (Strong really lit a fire under the team) but I think Krags might have started to turn things around. We'll never know...

I will say this...most UL fans, even the ones who rode him unmercifully and wanted him gone, would admit that he was a stand-up guy. I think we know that's important to Miles. Of course he wants to hire someone with the right skills, but he is also looking for character, and on that front, Krags is solid.

For what it's worth....