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Hey guys, I talked a little earlier with OL Luke Kandra, who announced today he'll transfer from Louisville to UC.
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Kandra was originally a member of the 2020 class, when he was a three-star out of nearby Elder (OH). The last staff did offer him at UC, but he decided on the Cardinals.

Kandra told me he didn't consider anyone else. He went in the portal on Wednesday afternoon, got the scholarship offer from coach Scott Satterfield and OL coach Nic Cardwell later that night, slept on it, then decided to accept the offer this morning.

Not a shock, but Kandra was very high on both coaches. "(Satterfield is) easy to talk to, a great coach and I loved how he coaches, how he works," Kandra told me. "Coach Cardwell came in this spring and instantly became my favorite coach I’ve had."

Also not a surprise, but I asked how Kandra thought the transition to the Big 12 would be under Satterfield. Kandra cited Satterfield's success at App State and at least early success at Louisville and told me, "he came in and turned it around, brought life into the program. I think he’ll just catapult into the success Cincinnati’s had and make the transition to Big 12 quite easily."

So, good stuff from Kandra, but I'm interested to hear what every recruit says about Satterfield. We don't know a ton and how he'll translate, so it's interesting hearing how all these transfers, recruits who have been committed to Louisville and others talk about their perception of Satterfield. Giving us more clues about what toe expect.

Full story coming in the morning.

All commits at this point:

Brady Drogosh
Ty Perkins
Evan Tengesdahl
Manny Covey
More coming….

looking at Key match ups and How Cincinnati will defend Freemantle and Nunge? Have to think Davenport and Lahkin will get that assignment.
personally I don't like JD vs Freemantle but I just don't see another alternative unless Cincinnati mixes in some zone concepts with their man to man.
Or a possibility of doubling down of Freemantle because he does have a tendency to turn it over (3.2/gm).
The Arizona game provided a preview of a Traditional 2 man post play and that didn't go well for Cincinnati allowing Tubelis 30pts and Ballo 21pts.

Another key stat in this match up is playing minutes for Viktor Lahkin (averages 19/min) vs Nunge 28 min. Who gets to defend Nunge for 9 minutes? Stand up Ody Oguama! your needed to play your best game of the season. Maybe a good time for Old Dominion Tranfer Kalu Ezikpe to step up?

Davenport (26/min) on the other hand will have his hands full with Freemantle (27/min), The key stat here is Davenport only averages (3.8/reb) a game. Coach Miller spoke in his press conference that Cincinnati has to play Physical and get on the back boards. Unfortunately that doesn't play into Davenports strengths but this is The Crosstown Shootout.

On paper the guard play on both teams are similar when scoring but Xavier's trio of Boum, Jones and Kunkel shoot just under 50% from beyond the arc compared to Cincinnati's DDJ, MAW and Nolley at 38%.

If Cincinnati can defend Xavier's 2 headed monsters inside and match the play on the perimeter this game will be won from the Bench. Which teams bench will provide the winning touch in this years shootout? Currently Xaviers bench scores just under 13 pts a game while Cincinnati's bench scores just under 16 pts a game. Freshmen Daniel Skillings (14pts, 13 boards) and Josh Reed (10pts. 9 boards) had their best games of the year last Sunday in the win vs Bryant.

My pick: Cincinnati in a nail biter

Had to see this one brewing for a while, but Desmond Ridder will start on Sunday for Atlanta:
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Another guy the new coaches recruited at U of L, four-star quarterback Michael Van Buren. Not sure what this means for Drogosh:

Should've posted this when I posted the story this afternoon. But wanted to do this for Johnson, as I have with every other offered HS prospect:
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Two new coaches for UC, Bryan Brown and Derek Nicholson, with three-star Louisville commit Jayden Davis tonight. I'm told he'll be officially visiting the Bearcats this weekend:
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Four-star Louisville pledge from California:

Guys, I won't post the whole thing, since it's on The Athletic, but meant to post the tweet from Justin Williams yesterday. Via a public records request with UC, here's some details from Satterfield's contract. I can tell you the $7.25 million pool for the assistants jumps out the most for me. For perspective, Fickell's Bearcats staff this season had $5.25 million. And at Nebraska, Matt Rhule's staff will get $7 million.

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Summary:

defense: Bryan Brown DC (has also coached CB), Derek Nicholson ILB

offense: Pete Thomas QB, Nic Cardwell OL

off field: Mark Speir, and Cartrr Wilson recruiting and scouting

From what I'm told, it sounds like this was just about put in place last week, between Louisville and Jeff Brohm. It sounds like had Satterfield not taken the UC job, he might have been fired. So the timing worked out perfect for him, where he wouldn't get fired. But there was word from Purdue I'm told last week, that Brohm was already in talks with U of L. So I don't think there was ever a formal search at Louisville, I think it was just a matter of letting the dust settle from Satterfield leaving, so the announcement for Brohm could be made.
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Footballscoop reporting that Jim Leonard’s last game at Wisconsin will be serving as interim HC for their bowl game.

John Brice at football scoop is reporting that Gino Guidugli and Louisville OC Lance Taylor are candidates for the vacant Western Michigan job. Brice believes Taylor is the leader. Gino is likely a candidate to be Wisconsin’s OC and Lance Taylor might be a candidate to be UC’s OC (even though we’ve read that Coach Satterfield actually calls the plays). Mike Hart (Michigan RB coach) is also a candidate to replace Tim Lester.

WMU is expected to make its decision later this week.

I think that’s a nice group of finalists for Western Michigan.

This could be a double whamy for Louisville because Taylor was believed to be the likely interim HC at Louisville.

It’s Day 3 of the transfer portal, and over a thousand student-athletes have entered. JT Daniels has also entered after playing QB at USC, Georgia and West Virginia.

Thought I heard on the radio today that 14 Louisville players jumped into the portal, but not 100% certain.

Full presser from earlier today:

Enquirer reporting Josh Wylie is opting out of the Fenway Bowl.

I love college football. No other sport comes close to generating the excitement I feel on a college football Saturday, but I also hate the direction the sport continues to go.

The traditions of college football continue to erode. Here‘s my very basic challenge- can you list all the teams in your school’s league in 5 minutes? If so, you advance to round 2. Can you list all the teams in each of the P5 conferences in 15 minutes? If you can do that, you’re playing for the big prize by advancing to the bonus round, list all the teams in the G5 leagues in 20 minutes. If you can do all that, you earn the prestigious title of Grand Poobah of College Football. As much as I love college football, I am not worthy of that title because leagues keep pilfering schools from other leagues, and I can’t keep up. Some leagues are now approaching the size of Jabba the Hutt, and geographically these leagues make no sense anymore.

National Signing Day, college coaching searches and the transfer portal are colliding in December to make a massive game of musical chairs for head coaches, assistant coaches, recruits and college players. The fans then pick through the carnage to see what jerseys they want under the tree for Xmas.

Ethics change too. One year the ethics are a coach won’t talk to another school before his season is over. But when schools show they don’t respect those types of ethics, coaches either adapt or miss opportunities. I admired Coach Fickell last season for his dedication to his UC players and refusal to talk to another school during his season, but after getting bypassed for the Notre Dame job, the ethics slide ruler collided with practicality, and Fickell was communicating with Wisconsin weeks prior to the end of the season.

I’ve covered a half dozen college coaches, and some I even admired. But all of them eventually disappointed me and some even used me to help them get a better job. I’m either not too smart or way too naive to have been duped that many times, but I keep wanting college football and the institutions/people in it to love the game as much as I do.

At the very least, I’d like for coaches to stop using the word “family“ when referring to their team. You don’t leave a family by not telling them you’ve taken another job somewhere else and leaving them behind. I still love college football, but I no longer idolize the major players because in the end it always ends the same for everyone. One group celebrates the new job and the riches they’ll get, and the other group is left scratching heads and wondering what just happened.

I’m happy UC has a new head coach and a new direction. I’m excited to see what happens next in player and coach acquisition, but I’m sure of only one thing- the new marriage will end badly at some point. But, I’d much rather lose a coach because he was successful than have him fired because he wasn’t. I’m not sure that’s ethical, but it’s the reality of college football these days.

No highlights available as of now, but wanted to post the story from UC athletics on the game today:

I think it’s worth noting that Deion Sanders has hired former Kent State head coach Sean Lewis as the Buffs’ OC.

I have to give Deion credit. This is an excellent hire, and it’s going to be a nice raise for Lewis and a very good consolation prize after not getting the UC job.

On Twitter, there were some very vocal UC fans vociferously criticizing the idea of UC interviewing Lewis for the Bearcat HC job, and I think this hire shows how misguided those complaints were. Lewis really needed to get out of Kent. It’s a really tough job.

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Guys, I had a long conversation with Ty Spalding, the publisher of the Rivals site covering Louisville, CardinalSports.com. I honestly just said, "Tell me about Satterfield, from your experience." And I wrote down everything Spalding told me. He told me I could use his name, so I'm doing so, but keeping this on the board. Still, lot of perspective here on Satterfield that's pretty interesting:



"He’s an offensive minded guy. He’ll be the playcaller. The bread and butter, the staple is the stretch zone run, off tackle. He did it at App State, at Louisville and he’ll implement it from day one. It’s basically an off-tackle run. I’d describe it as outside zone, stretch. That’s what he’s going to do, implement and build offense around. At Louisville, in his first year, I don’t think many ACC teams knew how to expect or prepare and the offense gave everyone fits. He’s an offense-minded guy. But as time went on and years went by, he didn’t change anything, add any new wrinkles and tried to do the same thing from year one in two, three and four. The book was out and he started to run into pushback. That’s when his offensive numbers fell off.

Beyond that, I can tell you that the biggest gripe with people in Louisville is that he never really embraced the city. A lot of fans felt like it was a bad fit, from a cultural standpoint. They felt like he distanced from inner city, from the community and that was something fans couldn’t get over. He’s from North Carolina. You can hear it in his voice, he’s a rural guy. Everyone during his tenure thought the first job that came open close to North Carolina, he’d jump. When the South Carolina stuff happened, they interviewed Satterfield and had they chose him, he’d be gone. The sense around here was he wanted to get back to the Carolinas. From there, his tenure, there was just a divide with the fan base. Whenever they’d play a good game, there was something fans wouldn’t be happy with. He didn’t lose enough to make a change made, but he didn’t win enough to earn an extension and raise. When you throw in the divide, some of that has to do with how he approached the rivalry game with Kentucky. They got blown out three years.

To end the season, a lot of fans were like, we have this recruiting class. The general consensus was we have to extend him, but from what I’m told, he and the AD met and Satterfield and his agent wanted a $500,000 a year raise. (AD Josh) Heird said, we’re not gonna do that. At that point, Scott and his agent got the hint, got the message they needed a reset, go somewhere else to get his career back on track. I would imagine that’s when all this came about. From a Louisville fan perspective, you have two sides. You have one that when you lose a coach to a program you think you’re better than, you’re embarrassed. But some say this is best for both sides. He didn’t get fired, he landed on his feet in a good position. It’s also good for Louisville, since fans didn’t show up to games. Even when winning, a loud majority wanted a change made. Here, you have a clean break. I think most Louisville fans were happy today. They know the class is special, but they’re not gonna sacrifice long term success for the recruiting class.

I think he’ll bring quite a few assistants with him. Brian Brown is a DC who’s been with Satt for years. Mark Ivey has been with him for years. I’d expect both to go with him. His defense is a 3-4 base. He took over a defense that was one of the worst in country and now it’s a top defense. He’s a good mind and the players seem to really like him. I’m expect him to go with Satt. Typically, Satterfield is very hands off with defense and took more responsibility with the defense when Louisville started season slow. By and large the defense played well. Scott is very loyal to his assistants. A lot wanted of people wanted to fire Brown, but he’ll live and die with his guys.

As far as what players thought of him, I think players going from (Bobby) Petrino to Satterfield, they definitely likes Scott’s temperament. They like that he brought them around the coaches’ families, to houses for dinners, meals. It was a more inviting locker room compared to Petrino. The knock on Scott is he’s not really an alpha male personality. For a while, there was a sense that the strength coach ran the program and acted as a bad cop, so Scott could be quiet behind the scenes. This happens everywhere but there were players who transferred out that they didn’t wanna lose. The consensus is Scott just never really evolved the offensive playbook.

Most people here knew he was gonna look to get out. Most knew that he’d probably accept a lateral move. We just thought it would be in the Carolinas, like NC State, USC. I didn’t think he was a good fit here.

I really think he had no choice, because he wasn’t gonna get an extension, he wasn’t gonna get raise and he was going up against fan base that wasn’t supporting him. No new fans coming on board, something was just off."

Our friend Clint Cosgrove asked me to weigh in. Here's mine and his thoughts: