Louisville football earned its first win of the season after the Cardinals defeated the Villanova Wildcats 59-13 on Friday night. Jeff Brohm and Louisville are now 1-1 and will quickly turn their attention to their Week 3 opponent, as the Cardinals already have their second-ranked opponent of the season.
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Louisville showed in Week 1 that they can compete with the best of the best after they took No. 9 Ole Miss to the final seconds of the game, and now they will try to earn a massive conference win this upcoming weekend. The Cardinals are facing No. 17 SMU at home in what some are calling the biggest ACC matchup of the season.
However, ESPN doesn’t view it that way, as the Cardinals and Mustangs were overlooked big time by ESPN after it made a head-scratching decision about the broadcast.
Louisville football gets brutal TV decision ahead of huge ACC showdown
Louisville vs. SMU is expected to have major ACC Championship implications, as both teams are expected to finish in the top three of the conference. Leading up to the season, everyone picked Miami to make the ACC Championship game, but who the Hurricanes would play was a toss-up between Louisville and SMU.
For that reason, this Week 3 showdown is a huge conference game where whoever wins will gain a major advantage by earning the head-to-head victory. However, ESPN makes a questionable decision, to say the least, as rather than making this rank-vs-rank matchup on ESPN, they put the game on ESPN 2 and put No. 10 Texas A&M vs. unranked Kentucky on ESPN.
ESPN decided to air the Kentucky vs. Texas A&M game on ESPN next week, while leaving arguably the most important ACC regular-season game on ESPN2.
— Dean Ralsky (@DeanRalsky) September 13, 2026
SMU vs. Louisville is one of two ranked-on-ranked games on Saturday...
They really just can't help themselves, can they? pic.twitter.com/9N1PMJvJyC
Louisville vs. SMU is just one of three rank-vs.-rank matchups in Week 3, and ESPN putting Texas A&M vs. Kentucky on the prime channel is just confusing. Kentucky is coming off a disastrous performance against Alabama, where the Wildcats lost 45-17, and now the broadcast decides to give Kentucky ESPN and Louisville ESPN 2? Just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Right now, Kentucky is a 15.5-point underdog in this matchup, while the Cardinals-and-Mustangs game is expected to be extremely close, with Louisville as just a 1.5-point favorite. The Cardinals have a huge conference showdown, and you would think ESPN would prioritize that game, especially after how well Louisville played against Ole Miss and grabbed everyone's attention.
However, the ACC continues to be overlooked by other conferences, and ESPN putting this crucial rank-vs.-rank matchup on ESPN 2, and a top-10 team hosting a 1-1 Kentucky team after losing by 28 the week before just proves that.
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