Marty Lowe, the quarterback who became the first Louisville passer to take the field in the Governor’s Cup, has died, Cardinals coach Jeff Brohm confirmed Tuesday, Sept. 8. Lowe was 54, just shy of his 55th birthday by two weeks.
Brohm said he had recently visited Lowe, who was battling Stage 4 kidney cancer, and said he "knew it wasn't good."
"He was a great person, great teammate," Brohm said. "We definitely send our condolences to him and his family. We're here for them if they need us."
Lowe spent his Louisville career from 1991-95 and was Brohm’s backup before moving into the starting role in 1994, when Louisville and Kentucky revived their rivalry in a game that was called “Game One” and marked the first time the matchup carried the Governor’s Cup name.
“You have pregame jitters anyway, but just as a quarterback, my vision wasn't as experienced, at that point,” Lowe told The Courier Journal in 2024 about the game.
A fourth-year junior from Chattanooga, Tennessee, he completed 24 of 37 passes for 215 yards in Louisville’s 20-14 loss to Kentucky in the season opener. The Cardinals opened 1-2 and finished 6-5, a year that became the final season for Howard Schnellenberger.
The following year, in Ron Cooper’s Louisville head coaching debut, Lowe helped deliver the program’s first win over the Wildcats, a 13-10 victory. He threw for 2,268 yards that season, his second straight 2,000-yard passing year, and added 16 touchdowns as Louisville went 7-4.
By the end of his college career, Lowe had totaled 4,861 passing yards and 27 touchdowns. He later played two seasons in the Arena Football League, with the St. Louis Stampede in 1996 and the Texas Terrors in 1997, before a knee injury ended his playing days.
His coaching path included stops as running backs coach at UTEP and Western Carolina, an assistant at Louisville, an offensive assistant for the Nashville Kats, and head coach of the Georgia Force. Lowe also worked briefly as a sideline reporter for Louisville broadcasts on WHAS Radio and served as director of football operations for the Louisville Fire in 2007, five years after Brohm’s lone season as the team’s head coach.
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