Thursday’s Louisville notes brought a little bit of everything, from football betting angles to a fresh look at the Cardinals’ upcoming women’s soccer matchup and a few other items around the program.
The biggest on-field nugget came with the line for Louisville’s opener against Ole Miss: the Rebels are laying 6.5. That sets up a tough early test for Jeff Brohm’s team, but one that doesn’t look out of reach.
One angle in Louisville’s favor is the coach at the center of it all. Brohm’s offense, especially when he’s had time to draw up a plan, has a clear identity.
That matters in a game like this, particularly against an Ole Miss team that has some uncertainty on the defensive side. The Rebels’ defense ranked 62nd nationally in EPA per play last year, and the concern here is whether there’s a drop-off after the departures they’ve had.
If that happens, covering a full touchdown gets a lot harder.
There’s also the shift from Lane Kiffin to Pete Golding, which raises another question. The source of Ole Miss’ success last season is obvious enough, but the market may be baking in too much of that into this number.
Louisville, meanwhile, may not be a national title contender, but it could still be one of the ACC’s best teams. The pick: Louisville +7 (-112) at DraftKings.
The betting conversation isn’t isolated, either. Two of Athlon’s three college football writers also like Louisville to cover against Ole Miss, while Tom Fornelli of CBS is on the Cardinals to cover on Sunday night.
Around the program, Louisville women’s soccer is set for a Battle of the Bluegrass matchup with Kentucky in Lexington, the first regular-season meeting between the teams since 2018. Louisville knocked Kentucky out of the NCAA Tournament a year ago, which adds another layer to a game that already has plenty of edge. A preview of the match is also available.
Elsewhere in the notes, Alexis Cubit of the CJ laid out best-case and worst-case scenarios for the 2026 Louisville football season, and the first 2026 edition of the Jeff Brohm Radio Show featured Brohm expressing clear frustration over Georgia backing out of the scheduled home-and-home with Louisville.
The women’s basketball schedule for the 2026-27 ACC season is out as well, and Athlon’s Kyle Wood took a shot at predicting every College GameDay location for the 2026 season.
There was also a sharp note from Joe Gerth of the CJ, who wrote about how the merger of WAVE and WDRB’s news sites has led to the troubling disappearance of stories by WDRB journalists over the past dozen years.
On the Olympic sports side, Louisville field hockey, ranked 15th, is headed on the road this weekend to face Saint Louis and Michigan State.
And one more item from the college football world: a new documentary revisits the anger Texas Tech still holds from the Brendan Sorsby scandal. The tension around Sorsby’s legal fight and Texas Tech’s backing of its quarterback left a mark on the sport, and head coach Joey McGuire leaned into that in a team meeting, saying, “We are the most hated team in the country.
I love it. We are now the hunted.”
The documentary also includes Cody Campbell’s view of how the situation was handled. “Looking back on it, I know that Texas Tech and I handled everything with integrity, and we did things the right way,” Campbell said.
“I think this is something that could have been handled much more privately. We’re not going to forget about that, and I don’t think they’ll forget about it either when we’re up by 40 and still throwing the ball in the fourth quarter.
That’s where the retribution will come.”
In Other News...
Louisville Faces Another Brutal Nonconference Test With March Stakes Already Rising
Louisvilles 2026-27 nonconference slate already looks like the kind that can shape a season before league play even settles in. BartTorvik.coms early projections have the Cardinals lined up for games against Texas Tech, Texas, Michigan, Kentucky and Baylor, along with either St. Johns or Oregon, giving Kenny Paynes program a gauntlet of high-end matchups that should tell a lot about where this team stands by December.
For a roster still trying to establish its identity, the stakes go beyond rsum building. These are the sorts of games that can sharpen a team for March, but they also leave little margin for error, especially with more top-tier opponents still possible depending on how tournament play unfolds. In the ACC picture, Louisville is not alone in facing a difficult nonconference path, though Dukes early slate grades out as a touch tougher. [Read more 🡒]
Louisville Couldnt Afford To Lose Isaac Brown For One Huge Reason
Isaac Brown has been one of the most electric players on Louisvilles roster, the kind of back who can change a game with one crease and turn modest touches into chunk plays. After moving to running back in high school, he quickly became a cornerstone for the Cardinals, piling up more than 2,000 rushing yards across his first two college seasons and leading the FBS last year with an eye-catching 8.8 yards per carry.
So when Brown surfaced in the transfer portal early in the offseason, it was easy to understand why Louisville was determined to keep him in the fold. With his explosive style and proven production, he was too valuable a piece to lose lightly, and his departure would have left a real void in a backfield that has leaned on his big-play ability. The whole situation put a spotlight on just how much the Cardinals had riding on keeping one of their most efficient offensive weapons in place. [Read more 🡒]
Louisvilles Ole Miss Opener Suddenly Carries Much Bigger Stakes
The first week of Louisvilles season already had a familiar weight to it, but a recent College Football Playoff projection gave the opener against Ole Miss a different kind of urgency. College football reporter Josh Yourish put the Cardinals in the field for the first time ever, slotting them in as the No. 11 seed, a nod to a roster that looks strong in a few key spots and to the expectation that Jeff Brohms program can again get the most out of its personnel.
The reasons for the optimism are easy to see, especially with veteran pieces back and a running back group and linebacker room that should give Louisville a sturdy base. Still, the whole prediction rests on one central question: how quickly the Cardinals can get real answers under center. Brohm has a track record of developing quarterbacks, but Louisvilles Week 1 meeting with Ole Miss now feels like more than a measuring-stick game, because what happens there could decide whether this playoff chatter has legs or fades fast. [Read more 🡒]