What I Hate about You: The Louisville Cardinals

I have been waiting all week to do this post. I kept thinking about how I could express all of the hatred that I hold in my soul for the Louisville Cardinals. I have lived in Louisville all of my life in close proximity to these people. I could write my doctorate thesis about how much I loathe the Dirty Birds, but alas I only have this short space to fill.

Without further ado: What I hate about the Louisville Cardinals.

Their Sayings and Hand Signals/Sign Language

Phrases like “We the Ville”, “Cardinal Strong”, “The Best College Sports Town in America” and “Louisville First” can only be trumped that the moronic “L” that Card fans love to throw up like some half assed gang sign or Cub Scout sign language. Louisville fans are known to say these things and do the hand gesture whenever bragging about or talking about their team.

I have a hand signal that I like to use towards them and it only consists of one of my middle fingers. Sometimes both middle fingers if I am feeling a bit saucy.

Their Sense of “Style”

Linebeards and flatbills are just the tip of the iceberg. Shirts with truly moronic and delusional sayings such as “I Bleed Red” (yeah, you and the rest of humanity, genius), “Louisville Basketball: The two scariest words in college basketball” and “Cardinal Swagger” are also popular choices. But my favorite is a shirt I once saw with Rick Pitino on the front that said “The Don of Louisville” and had his “Hit List” on the back. UK was on it of course.

Cardinal Swagger=Getting drunk before the home football game, showing up a quarter late and leaving early as Louisville is getting beaten by a team such as FIU while drunkenly “swaggering” out to your car as vomit blasts out of your mouth.

The Campus

It’s flat out ugly. It sits between a dog food factory and some broke down train tracks. I wish I was kidding. It rests in “Old Louisville” which is code for “Crappy Louisville” and it’s tiny. It’s less like a commuter school and more like a community college. I live in Louisville and refused to attend the university just for the fact that I would have to look at hundreds of Cardinal fans every day for at least four years. Thank you Bellarmine University for giving me a superior hometown option.

The Infatuation With Charlie Strong

When Strong was hired they immediately adopted the loathsome “Card Strong” phrase and it has already been done to death. I guess Card Strong means losing to FIU and finishing fourth in the Big (L)East. Strong has done absolute squadoosh yet he is treated like a god and Card Fans talk like he is Bill Brasky from Saturday Night Live. I hate to break it to you Louisville fans but there is a reason he never got hired in the SEC, and it has to do with the fact that he sucks as a coach.

As soon as he was hired the Cards immediately thought that their team should be ranked #1 and the favorites to win it all in a 2-3 year time span despite the fact that Strong was 0-1 as a head coach for his career.

The Infatuation with their Sucky Players

Most fans get behind their players and root for them. Mostly because their players are good. Not Louisville fans. I ran into some of them this Saturday running their mouths about how Kentucky won’t be able to cover Chichester. That’s right. 400 pound, I can’t catch a cold Chichester. Their obsession with Kyle Kuric is sick and disturbing, Peyton Siva is still better than John Wall and Brandon Knight in their eyes, Will Stein is all world and Preston Knowles should be in the NBA and he will one day cure cancer. All these guys suck yet Louisville fans act as if they are speaking about Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and John Elway, just to name a few.

They also love to bestow ridiculous nicknames on said sucky players and their coaches. Examples: TB5, PK, PS3, T-Will, HCCS, HCRP, CS5, etc… I suspect they do this because very few of them can actually speak in complete comprehensible sentences. After all, their average education level stops at the third grade. I have the data to back that up but I lost it.

Apologizing for Rick Pitino

When Ricky P was at UK he was the Anti-Christ. They would call him sleazy, slimy, and a cheater. Now he is the second coming of John Wooden. Despite the fact that he has not fulfilled any of the promises he made (multiple final fours, #1 recruiting classes, national titles, not being out of the top 25 ever again, beating Kentucky on a regular basis) Louisville fans will still defend him. Even though he can’t get out of the first round of the tournament and says ignorant things like “Mike Marra is the best pure three point shooter I have ever seen” and “Kyle Kuric is unguardable”, Ricky P is still near and dear to their hearts. If somebody lied that much to me to my face we would cease being acquaintances with that person.

Oh yeah, he cheated on his wife with an insane person, lied about it, blamed the media for it and embarrassed “Card Nation” on a national stage. But he is still a great guy.

Mascot

It’s a bird with teeth. Birds don’t have teeth, they have beaks to tear their food which they do not chew. They have an organ called a gizzard that grinds food because they lack teeth to chew anything. It’s science, people.

Their Athletic Director

Tommy “Turtleneck” Jurich runs his athletic department like Hugo Chavez runs Venezuela. He controls the Louisville media and will fire guys like Terry Minors from their job for talking bad about the program. Don’t believe me? He had Pitino’s call in show and TV show shut down last season because of the Karen Sypher trial. Dude has a Napoleon Complex worse than Napoleon himself.

He insists that Louisville is the superior team in the state and is “Miles Ahead” of Kentucky. If “Miles Ahead” means getting your ass kicked repeatedly by the Wildcats in every sport imaginable, then yes they are “Miles Ahead” in that regard.

And keep building and renovating athletic complexes that your fans don’t buy tickets to get in to. Keep up the good work!

Their Self Entitlement and the Chip on their Shoulders

This is what I hate the most. Louisville Cardinal fans really believe that their program belongs in the discussions with Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, etc… If some media outlet does not mention Louisville as an elite program they flip out and start complaining. They hold onto their 2 basketball titles from the 80’s as if they match up to anything the previously mentioned schools have.

The arrogance that they exude for no reason is mind boggling. If Kentucky was as mediocre as Louisville is I would recognize it. You don’t see Cincinnati Bengals fans go around acting like they are on par with the Steelers. Why? Because they have sense and they understand history. Louisville fans make bold proclamations like the Ville is “The Best sports town in America”. White Castle is the best cuisine in the history of the planet earth. It’s true because I said so.

Every referee is against them and every team they play cheats or is dirty. Nobody is safe from their “logic”. I like to call Louisville “Delusionville” sometimes because tha
t’s what it is. A land of delusions of grandeur where their team is the best despite the fact that they lose all the time and nobody else in the United States gives two craps about who they are, who they play and who plays on their team. Do you think West Virginia looks at them as a rival? No. How about UConn? No. They also probably think that Six Flags is better than Disney World and that a regular Kondike Bar is better than a Klondike crunch.

Louisville fans so want to be a part of the upper echelon of college athletics that they will lie to themselves and everyone around them to do so. They will also, in every way imaginable, try to bring Kentucky down to their level by insisting that Kentucky is not “Big Brother” and that Kentucky sucks. Well if that logic holds true, then Louisville is the worst team in all of sport, pro or college, because Kentucky has destroyed you in every way in the long history of both programs.

Anyway you shake it, Kentucky is better. We have more fans, we are more nationally recognizable, we are an elite basketball school, we have more regular season wins and bowl wins in football and our players don’t shoot or beat each other up on a regular basis.

Get a clue Cards. Nobody cares about your lousy teams, players and coaches but you. And that is far too many.

I leave you with the immortal words from Silky Johnson. Good night, Go Cats and Happy Hating.

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