Great first-person story by Brian Brohm over at Card Chronicle on his recruitment during his junior and senior years at Trinity High School. Sounds like Brian had his mind set on the University of Louisville from day one.
The story everyone is waiting to see, however, is one in which Brian reveals his thoughts of how the hiring of Steve Kragthorpe affected his football career. Brohm went from being a high draft choice after his junior year to the 56th pick in the NFL draft the following season, eventually winding up on the Green Bay practice squad.
Doubtful Brian will ever address it publicly but we would pay to read that one.
Although he will be remembered as one of the best UofL quarterbacks ever, Brohm’s tenure was also marred by injuries along the way, including an ACL tear in his sophomore season, a thumb injury during his junior year and suspected shoulder problems during his senior season.
He seemed to have lost much of his effectiveness his last year for whatever reasons.
Back to Kragthorpe. Sorry, but many Louisville fans are still wondering how a high profile program like LSU would hire the gentleman. Tulsa, where Kragthorpe coached before coming to UofL, refused to even grant him an interview for its recent job opening.
Numerous UofL fans are consoling/castigating LSU partisans over on a Tiger message board. The bitterness lingers.
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The official UofL sports web site is reporting that all 11,000 tickets for the Louisville-Cincinnati women’s basketball game at 2 p.m. Saturday have been sold. Must be expensive to pull back those upper tier black curtains for the upper regions of the KFC Yum! Center. There are 22,000 seats available, right? Maybe the printing presses couldn’t keep up with the demand. Curious situation.
There is no question that some team would have drafted Brian Brohm in the first round of the NFL draft had he come out after his junior year. This does not mean he would have become a starter or prized backup, but those who look will probably find some correlation between the amount of attention teams give to players they draft in earlier rounds, since they also pay them much more.
Steve Kragthorpe may be a fine human being–I have never met the man so I don’t know. He may also be a fine football coach–again, I have no personal or professional experience to rely on respecting his coaching ability.
But he failed spectacularly at Louisville. Perhaps Petrino left him a mess, but he had three years and could not improve it in that time. Maybe Petrino left him a fine team that lacked the skills to play in his system. Or it could be he inherited a winning team and destroyed it.
However you slice it, Kragthorpe could not get good players to play for him, whether already on the team or prospective recruits.
Strong showed what these players could do with good coaching and mentoring. In the end, that’s all you really need to know.
Time will tell whether Steve Kragthorpe can succeed as a football coach at the higher levels, as he has in the past. I wish him no ill, except that I have no love to lose for LSU.
Steve Kragthorpe hurt this program. But events have put Louisville football in a pretty good place, and for my part I’m happy with the way tings turned out.
From what Miles has hinted at he hired Kragthorpe on as the offensive coordinator, but essentially wants him to handle the quarterbacks. Miles is going to have a much larger hand in running the offense this year. Also saying that LSU will wind up the Music City bowl just shows a lack of knowledge about the LSU program and college football in general. Kragthorpe, as a coordinator, can not run this program into the ground. LSU already had one of the worst offenses in college football last year and still managed to fight for a BCS bowl berth and finished the season ranked top ten. The strength at LSU always is the defense which is coordinated by John Chavis not Ron Cooper. You are basing Kragthorpe’s ability to coach on three years at Louisville and choosing to ignore the other successes he has had. You may not be, but this post comes off sounding like a bitter man with an axe to grind.
We raised the same question about only 11,000 tickets being available for Saturday’s game vs. UC. The top ten reasons we came up with…
10)Opening the top would lead to messy siuations when UC fans jump to their demise during the blowout.
9)Someone messed up ordering the nachos and there are only enough for the lower level.
8)Papa John is filming a commercial up there today and prebooked the seats.
7)Scheduled housekeeping for the top deck. Any idea how long it takes to scrape gum off the bottom of 10,000 chairs?
6) Big East officials are sitting there today and don’t want to be disturbed.
5)Lady GaGa’s roadies are sleeping up there and don’t get up real early.
4)Some prankster painted all the seats Wildcat Blue spray painted Calipari’s name over each section number.
3)Flea market decided to try a weekend at the YUM and there are booths set up around the top level chairs.
2)Cincinnati has a stipulation in their game contract..they won’t play in front of more than 11,000 people.
1)Someone forgot to load the ticket printer again….
Here’s a guess. And it is only a guess. If UofL sells seats in the upper level they would have to hire at least 50 ushers / security personnel and they don’t think that would be cost effective.
Of course if I indulge in cynacism there is also the chance that they feel this encourges more buying of season tickets.
cb, those guys in the yellow shirts are volunteers I believe. And I don’t think security is that much of a concern at women’s games … or men’s games for that matter. But there are probably diminishing returns when people are only paying 5 bucks per ticket.
Curious indeed and no explanation yet.
Sounds like brother Springer has an axe to grind regarding coach Kragthrope. You made a great point about coach not being in Green Bay with Brohm. Cream rises to the top and so does talent in the NFL. How’d the U of L do this year? Was that a case of coach K’s lack of success, I reckon.
This reminds me of the folks in small Texas towns who have some success in high school football and think every kid who started should have gotten a division I scholarship, so the head coach is to blame.RockmanT
What I regret about the Kragthrope experience is watching the program deteriorate badly over three seasons. Sorry for you guys at LSU, Kragthorpe the offensive coordinator, Ron Cooper the defensive coordinator. This is somebody’s idea of a joke a very bad one. Good luck to you guys. You’re going to need it. Louisville football this past season was very rewarding thank you. I sure hope we hook up but not likely since LSU will probably wind up in the Music City Bowl. Charlie Strong is a winner and we’ll be in one of the warmer bowls.
Our fans… in the words of Tony The Tiger, “They’re GRRRRREAT!” But on the other hand, in the words of the late Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On?”
My Story: I was ready to buy 3 tickets yesterday when I was informed that there was no more tickets available. I really thought it was some kind of a joke. Or that there was some kind of mistake with the men & women team games or mix-up with the dates. However, that was not the case. The WBB game for 01/22/2011 has no more tickets available.
Now when I found out that only 11,000 tickets were available, I felt like an investigation was in need of. Maybe a call to the Athletic Dept. *I mean, I had to let some people down before in a similar UofL sporting event. But that event somewhat was my fault, even though there were yet empty seats noticed by several fans attending that particular game. (Umm…couldn’t have been a UofL game????)
In any case, I did inform those that was planning on going to the WBB game with me Saturday that it’s not going to happen. *Now this group of personnel isn’t exactly the same personnel as the last group mentioned above. But I still don’t like disappointing. Especially, when people R looking forward to going to a UofL event and They’re Not PAYING!!!
Now, I’m not a season ticket holder, but I thought I could count on being able to buy a WBB ticket in the 22,000-seat YUM!Center whenever I wasn’t working. Especially when it’s not a Big Name/Ranked Team coming in to play us. Hopefully, someone can give us some info on the reasoning behind this. Until then, Go Cards!!!
You are speculating on how high Brohm would be drafted had he come out his junior year. He might have gone higher, but to suggest he’d be a high draft pick is ridiculous. College fans always overestimate the draft stock of their players. NFL scouts don’t base their assessment of a player on one year alone, and Brohm’s stock did not go from top 10 pick to out of the first round in 1 year. Furthermore, he has been outperformed by Matt FLynn in Green Bay to the point Green Bay no longer wanted him. He had an opportunity in Buffalo and was beaten out by journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Trent Edwards who was cut by Buffalo. Kragthorpe was not coaching Brohm in Green Bay or Buffalo. Green Bay’s coaches have an excellent record of developing young QBs, so the fact that he could not make it in Green Bay speaks more to the point that Brohm has been overrated as an NFL prospect than anything else.
Speculation, maybe. But after his junior year he certainly would have gone much, much higher than 56th. As noted, Brohm was never the same after all the injuries … and Kragthorpe. As for Green Bay developing young quarterbacks, they haven’t had that many different quarterbacks in the last 20 years. A guy named Bret Favre was there forever, remember?
The Following QBs drafted/trained with the Packers during Brett’s Stay.Ty Detmer went on to Philly led them to playoff, 5teams in 7 years.Mark Brunell in GB, Played 9 years with Jacksonville led to 2 AFC Championships. Matt Hasselbeck, 1999-2000 Seattle Seahawks, played last week in playoff against Bears.Steve Bono played 2 years KC.AND Arron Rogers..All Played/drafted & were TRAINED in GB.As LSU Alum in GB,and watching practice here I was not surprised the Pack kept Flynn and cut Brohm.
I’m sure all eyes in Louisiana will be focused on Kragthrope especially since Tiger Offense has been highly critized..
Nor were we surprised after his showing.
Kurt Warner failed to make the roster in Green Bay the year they had Farve, Detmer and Brunell.