Another bad sign for Louisville, from Ron English's "exit interview" in today's hometown Courier-Journal: When your outgoing defensive coordinator describes a 34-point defeat in the midst of a five-game losing streak as "his favorite game of the season," that's when you know your fleeting time as a national player is long, long gone:

Interestingly, [English] said his favorite game of the season was at Pittsburgh, a 41-7 loss, "because our guys kept battling no matter what."

"We had three linebackers who had just set foot on campus," he said. "They couldn't set the front half the time."

English, on his way to the head the hopeless project at Eastern Michigan, practices his much-needed spinning skills by portraying his year in the 'Ville as one of beleaguered, improbable competence from ruin: The Cardinals lost five defensive starters to injury over the course of the year and wound up taking so few defensive players (23, including walk-ons) to the slaughterhouse finale at Rutgers that English says he started to flip out over attendance at a meeting before he realized everyone who was supposed to be in the room was. He says the staff "ran the numbers" and concluded that, at the start of the fourth quarter against Cincinnati on Nov. 14, Louisville was in the top 30 in total defense and the top 10 against the run. Of course, UL allowed 105 points and more than 1,200 yards over the last nine quarters of the season to finish 70th in total defense and 38th in rushing D, but who's counting?

Here, according to English, is the real reason Louisville went from a top-five, Orange Bowl winner to a last place team content to "keep battling" -- numbers:

"I watched Louisville for years, and from a talent standpoint, they were easily a top-20 talent team, and even top-10 at one point," English said. "And I was kind of surprised when I came here. The big-time schools win because of depth. You can't win playing 22 guys. Honestly, you need 18 guys on defense who can really play.

"Right now at Louisville, it's a building deal. It's not even like they're at the back end of a deal where you were rolling. This is a flat-out building phase. That's just the reality. You just don't have the players. … You can't have attrition like they've had and not take a step back."
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[Emphasis Added]

Randy Edsall, Jim Leavitt and Brian Kelly might like to hear more about these lack of players. From 2005-2007, the core of this year's team, Rivals ranked Louisville's incoming classes substantially ahead of UConn, South Florida and Cincinnati all three years, and the Cardinals signed almost three times as many players rated four or five stars (11, not including 2004 commit Brian Brohm) as the Huskies, Bulls and Bearcats combined (4). Louisville's record the last two years against those three conference rivals: 2-4 (the overall conference record is 4-10, if you throw in the back-to-back losses to Syracuse), after going 8-2 against that trio and running up a 24-6 conference mark in four years under Bobby Petrino. I'm sure the rest of the Big East -- and Louisville fans, in particular -- are interested in exactly what happened to all those players when Steve Kragthorpe began his "building phase."