The Mississippi St. curse is officially broken for the Louisville Cardinals

After a long stretch of bad luck for all things Louisville Cardinals involving Mississippi State, the Cardinal nine finally break the curse of the cowbell.

The Louisville Cardinals needed less cowbell.

Finally, after trailing 3-0 late in a College World Series elimination game on Thursday night, Louisville baseball delivered in a major way.

The Cards’s streak of bad luck, also known as “The Grantham Curse,” dates back to their loss of former defensive coordinator Todd Grantham. Grantham fell out of good graces with head coach Bobby Petrino after a tumultuous finish to Louisville football’s once-promising 2016 season.

Grantham, one of the better defensive coordinators in the country, landed on his feet immediately when he was hired at Mississippi State. Losing Grantham was one thing, but swapping with MSU by picking up their former defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon- yes, the guy Grantham just replaced.

The very next season, Louisville was pitted against MSU in the 2017 TaxSlayer Bowl where the Bulldogs, guided by Grantham and their third-string quarterback handed Lamar Jackson a loss in his final game as a Cardinal.

Grantham only stayed in Starkville for one extremely successful season with the Dogs before following head coach Dan Mullen to Florida. It seems like maybe he wasn’t the problem after all.

The bad luck against the Bulldogs continued into the basketball season where the men’s basketball team was destroyed by MSU in the NIT quarterfinals, ending David Padgett’s tenure as interim head coach.

Then, only ten days later, the Louisville women’s basketball team was ousted in overtime in the Final Four with a trip to the national championship game on the line. The infamous missed call on Louisville’s Miyesha Hines-Allen at the buzzer in regulation ended her career and led to a one-game suspension for women’s coach Jeff Walz in the 2019 tournament.

If that wasn’t enough, Mississippi State was after another one of Louisville’s coaches. At the conclusion of the 2018 baseball season, the MSU athletic department was in serious talks with Louisville baseball head coach Dan McDonnell.

Although he ultimately ended up staying, it may have been too much to bear should the Dogs have wound up snatching away one of the school’s most beloved coaches.

Thursday night was a chance for revenge, and a chance to once and for all put to bed the stupid Grantham curse. Since the Cards sent him packing, unfairly or not, there’s been a weird hex on the athletic program- a streak of bad luck in which the program in Starkville sprang upset after upset.

This time, however, it was Louisville who pulled the upset over the veteran-laden Mississipi State squad in incredible comeback fashion.

After falling behind 3-0 with only 9 outs left in their season, Louisville’s bats warmed up and they finally found some timely hitting against the Bulldogs.

To complete the comeback, Louisville’s Drew Campbell perfectly dropped a single into center field to advance the Cards to the final four on the College World Series for the first time in program history.

The curse was finally broken.

It’s not that the Cards have been losing to Mississippi State for years. In fact, prior to this three-year stretch, Louisville has had some success against the Bulldogs. It was more a matter of an unreal set of circumstances where the Cards kept having their seasons end at the hands of a program that was almost always the underdog in every situation.

In every major sport, the Bulldogs sent a group of seniors home for the final time- until Thursday.

Sweet, sweet revenge.

Now, let’s go see a man about a Wahoo.