Why Louisville football fans shouldn’t take the next two weeks for granted

The Louisville football season comes and goes in the blink of an eye, but it’s the build-up that makes every year so special.

When I was in college, I drove by Cardinal Stadium nearly every day.

Growing up a huge University of Louisville sports fan, it has always been easy to love the rich tradition of Louisville basketball. However, being a Louisville football fan takes patience and a true understanding of the city and program’s identity.

Louisville will always be basketball-first, at least during my lifetime, and everything else will be a distant second. That’s who we are; That’s our culture.

However, for me, there will always be a nostalgia around Louisville football, and particularly around Cardinal Stadium, that is unparalleled by anything else in my life.

My first few semesters of college were spent at Spalding University on the north end of downtown Louisville. Though it was out of the way, I always made a trip to Cardinal Stadium on my way home. A short trip through Old Louisville and a quick pass through the middle of campus landed me in the bronze lot in seven minutes. There, I’d sit and listen to sports talk radio and snap some pictures of the sun setting over the stadium, and maybe take a walk somewhere around campus. This became a pretty routine when I had a few free minutes.

After I transferred to UofL midway through my undergraduate studies, the trips to the stadium were shorter and much more frequent. My now-fiance took evening classes in Davidson Hall, and I’d finish up homework and papers in Ekstrom library before ducking away for a few minutes to take in the sights around the stadium before we left campus for the day.

There’s so much more to erecting what is now a 65,000 seat stadium from the grounds of an old railyard than maybe getting to catch a football game six times a year. And though most didn’t see it, I always did. I always wanted to hang out in the place that brought me some of the happiest moments of my youth.

Creating the current football culture in Louisville, Kentucky has less to do with the product that is on the field, and more to do with the people that fill the seats on Saturdays. I am a first-hand testament to the type of joy that Louisville football games can spark in one’s life. As a child growing up going to as many games as I possibly could, those are the moments I lived for.

While most kids wanted to go home and ride their bikes, play video games, and other shenanigans, I daydreamed about passing the football in the green lot, running up and down the hill that separated the tailgaters from Denny Crum, and celebrating touchdowns as train horns rang through the air.

While other kids’ parents sent them in for teacher appreciation week with fruit and Target gift cards, I brought my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Travis, a Henry Miller poster. My free time was spent watching ESPN instead of Disney Channel and reading old media guides instead of books.

Louisville football culture is unique in its own right, and to understand the excitement, the pageantry, the spectacle that is Cardinal football, is to understand more fully who I am as a person. I am quite certain that I am not alone in this sentiment. In fact, what makes Louisville football culture unique, is what each of us puts into it.

The tradition began at Old Cardinal Stadium, and perhaps even further back than that. From Camp to Corso, to Schnellenberger… and whatever that was that came between, Louisville football fans have always been ahead of the curve given their performance on the field.

After the final season in Old Cardinal Stadium, many of the dedicated tailgaters remained behind at their usual spots. Not too far out of view of Freedom Hall and Broadbent Arena, and only a fifteen-minute walk to the newer Cardinal Stadium, the party inside the ring road loop is still going hard.

Three-quarters of a mile of asphalt runs away from the south end of the stadium. This concrete jungle filled with every kind of Louisvillian imaginable, all hopped up on liquid courage, primed to stumble into the game five minutes after it starts, is known as the green lot.  In between, local businesses, restaurants, and, yes, cabooses serve as a perfect fusion of tailgating and Louisville weirdness.

Inside the stadium, the main event serves as two parts college football game, and one part social hour. Much hell is raised about those who spend their time on the “party decks,” or under at concessions catching up with old friends, but to each his own. For games that will truly impact the outcome of a solid season fans are engaged, loud, and typically in it until the finish.

While big-name schools like Clemson, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Ohio State are steeped in tradition, they also have a rich history of winning and decades of building culture.

Louisville football fandoms were built from nothing. The Cardinals weren’t even an NCAA team until the 60’s, and even then, they spent much of their time as an independent team willing to play anyone, any time, anywhere- and also, losing most of those games.

Now that the play on the field, the facilities, league, coaching, etc., have caught up to the fan support, building actual gameday traditions will still be decades in the making.

Regardless of the team’s performance on the field, doing this only six times a year never feels like enough. Football season represents the changing of the seasons. From summer to the start of the school year, into “Hubers” season, and finishing off Thanksgiving weekend. This three-month span seems to go by faster than any other time of year. Weekends are consumed by football obsession, and the weekdays in-between are filled with discussion of the team’s performance on the field and how you’re going to catch the next game.

For me, this is the last time to have things slow down for just a while. The great part about college football is the unknowns leading up to the season. Unlike any other sport at pretty much any level, there are very few open practices, no preseason games, and much of the inner-workings and post-summer developments are kept well under-wraps until the season’s opening kick-off.

Until then, do yourself a favor. If you have a free hour, go check out the stadium. Drive through the campus. Experience the preseason hype as it’s meant to be experienced. As school gets back into full swing, there is a buzz of newness and excitement in the air.

Enjoy the preseason hype, embrace expectations, and make plans for how you will spend your Saturdays. The rest of this year is about to fly by. Use these coming weeks as an opportunity to soak it all in. Football season is far too short to wish any time away.