Black-Out Thursday
October 25, 2006 03:54 PM | General
October 25, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Louisville has designated its game against West Virginia on Nov. 2, “Black Out Thursday.” The school is encouraging all Cardinal fans to wear black for the nationally televised game that is pitting two Top 10-ranked teams.
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| West Virginia needed all six Steve Slaton touchdowns to knock off Louisville 46-44 in triple overtime last year.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
U of L coach Bobby Petrino has issued a media blackout for his players, preferring instead to let them do their talking on the field. West Virginia was circled on Louisville’s calendar from the moment the final gun sounded on the Mountaineers’ 46-44 triple-overtime victory in Morgantown last year.
The birds will be chirping at Papa John’s Stadium on Nov. 2.
“The more you win the more is at stake,” said West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez. “We’ve had so many expectations placed on us after the bowl game that we’ve had to deal with this now for eight months. Another week of it to me is not that big of a deal.”
West Virginia has been down this road before with Louisville.
In 1989, West Virginia traveled to the Fairgrounds to face Louisville in what the school was calling the “Game of the Century.”
They brought Johnny Unitas and Sam Huff in on a helicopter to witness the ceremonial coin toss with CBS cameras rolling. Unfortunately, the network didn’t think enough of the game to keep their cameras rolling once it started.
Coach Howard Schnellenberger called it “the biggest game in school history.”
And it was almost the biggest victory in school history until the No. 9-ranked Mountaineers got 17 unanswered fourth-quarter points to win the game, 30-21.
A year later in 1990, Louisville mailed out postcards picturing Schnellenberger and Don Nehlen staring at each other. The postcard read: THE REMATCH, Louisville vs. West Virginia, Mountaineer Field, Morgantown, W.Va., Saturday, Sept. 22, 1 pm.”
“Every time we play Louisville it’s either the game of the decade, the game of the world, or the game of something or other,” former West Virginia coach Don Nehlen remarked in 1990. “I think last year when we played them at Louisville (1989) they called it the ‘Game of the Century.’
“I knew they’d come up with some gimmick for this game,” Nehlen continued. “The big thing is we know Louisville wants to beat us badly. I would guess if they beat us they would probably proclaim that they have finally arrived.”
Louisville won that 1990 game 9-7 on three Klaus Wilmsmeyer field goals – the final one from 42 yards with 3:42 remaining. Nehlen used the word “inept” to describe his offense that gained just 238 yards against a fired-up Cardinal defense.
Louisville went on to beat Alabama 34-7 in the Fiesta Bowl that season in what many still consider to be one of Louisville’s finest hours in football. So in a sense the Cardinals did arrive that year, but not to the level that they enjoy today.
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| Robert Walker scored a 50-yard touchdown to help West Virginia beat Louisville 36-34 in Morgantown in 1993.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
In 1993 and again in 2005, the two teams played high-stakes games in Morgantown and West Virginia needed fourth-quarter comebacks to win both. In 1993, WVU used a couple of Cardinal turnovers to turn a 21-10 deficit into a 36-34 victory.
Last year, West Virginia was trailing 24-7 in the fourth quarter before quarterback Patrick White engineered one of the most improbable comeback wins in school history. In both instances Louisville was the higher ranked team.
That is a far cry from the first time Louisville appeared on West Virginia’s schedule 22 years ago in 1984.
“It really should have been against the law for us to take that team down there,” Schnellenberger remembered six years later. “It was devastating.”
Craig Swabek, a freshman running back for the Cardinals in 1985, recalled his first impressions of West Virginia for the Courier-Journal in 1990: “We thought we had a shot,” he said. “We didn’t know any better. I didn’t realize until my junior or senior year how bad we were back then.
“Looking back there was no way we could have won,” Swabek said. “When you walked out onto the field there were 65,000 people going absolutely nuts, and you looked over on their sideline and they had 150 guys dressed – every one of them bigger than you.”
Swabek remembered getting his face smashed into the painted state of West Virginia on his first carry.
“I got tackled and there were two or three guys pushing my head down into the turf, punching on me, sort of pushing on me to get up off the ground saying, ‘Welcome to college football, freshman,’” he said.
Of course Louisville is light years from where it was 22 seasons ago under Schnellenberger. Today, the Cardinals are a legitimate national title contender.
The Thursday night Louisville-West Virginia match up will arguably be one of the most important football games in Big East Conference history. It will be only the fifth time two Top 10 Big East teams will have squared off against each other. The previous four each involved Miami, now playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Some have criticized the Big East for scheduling a game of this magnitude on a Thursday night instead of a more traditional Saturday afternoon or evening, but Commissioner Mike Tranghese believes Thursday night provides the biggest audience to showcase his two top programs.
“If it were on Saturday, it would be on ABC and go to 11 percent of the country,” he said. “This will be in prime time. I can’t tell you what the rating will be, but I do know that football people around the country will be watching.”
Cardinal coach Bobby Petrino said his team has done what it has needed to do to remain undefeated heading into the big game.
“When we first started the season, you don’t want to talk about it because you want to take one game at a time,” Petrino said. “The media and fans may have been talking about this game for a long time, but coaches never approach it like that. But you’re always thinking if you can get to 7-0, it’s huge. Now it’s here and we’ll prepare hard for it and go in and enjoy it.”
Rodriguez admits it’s a game of great national interest, but he’s never been one to place all of his eggs into one basket.
“I know we’ve been in some people’s locker rooms with a clock ticking down to the game: three hundred days, ten hours, two minutes and four seconds before you play West Virginia,” he said. “I guess that’s kind of exciting but I have never believed in that because all of the sudden you get down to that thing and what if it doesn’t go well? Oh boy, what are you going to do next?
“I’ve never been that way because they all count as one,” Rodriguez said. “It’s one game and we’ll do the best that we can.”
Big game? Well, you can get tickets on www.stubhub.com for the economical price of $190. A pair of 50-yard-line B&W Suite tickets with a Red A lot parking pass is going for $2,500.
The clock is ticking.
