Louisville Has Lots of Scholarships Available

Every program has some turnover when there is a coaching change. There are players dissatisfied with the new system, personalities clash, promises made by the old regime are no longer valid, academics can always be an issue.

That's fine, but turning over a quarter of the roster in a little more than 12 months is ridiculous. Especially when a team goes from 12-1 and winning the Orange Bowl to 6-6 and home for the holidays. That appears to be what has happened at Louisville in the year after Bobby Petrino left and Steve Kragthorpe took control.

The Cardinals' beat writer from the Louisville Courier-Journal listed 21 underclassmen who have left the football team from the spring of 2007 to June 2008. While his list included a couple of players who left early for the NFL, it is still a crazy number.

• 4 players had to quit due to medical conditions.
• 6 were simply dismissed from the team.
• 8 transferred, left the program or quit the team.
• 1 was an academic casualty.

Add in the 17 seniors who graduated and that comes to 38 players out of the Louisville program in Kragthorpe's first year. There's winnowing out players not on-board with a new system, and then there's clearcutting.

Louisville brought in a 22-man recruiting class. That leaves 16 open scholarships coming into this season. They have roughly 20 scholarship seniors on the 2008 roster. The NCAA limits the number of scholarships to be given to a recruiting class in a given year to 25. It's going to be a while before Louisville gets close to its limits.

At least the walk-ons should get rewarded this season.