December 21st, 2016 – There was no way for us to know. I’m not sure many of us even realized that would care, let alone that it would set us on a path to destruction. Mascots are a fun sideshow we love to see at games, tailgates, birthday parties, weddings, etc.
Unless they are evil.
On that fateful day of December 21st, 2016 Louisville’s men’s basketball team was set to take on archrival Kentucky in the KFC Yum! Center. As part of the festivities the school announced they would be relaunching our favorite human-sized tooth-bird, Louie. This is what we got:
Evil.
From the moment you saw him you knew something was wrong. Gone was our handsome yet angry cardinal bird. Here before us stood the result of some horrible lab experiment that went sideways. One that tried to combine Gary Busey with Foghorn Leghorn and see if we’d notice if they slapped a Louisville basketball jersey on it.
We noticed.
But any fears over his appearance or possible bad mojo quickly evaporated as the 10th-ranked Cards took down the 6th-ranked Cats for the first time since 2012. We were ecstatic. We thought to ourselves that even though New Louie was pure nightmare fuel, at least he’s our new lucky charm. We were so young and naïve.
Ten days later we received our first glimpse of the dark powers New Louie held. LSU manhandled and completely shutdown one of the greatest offenses led by one of the greatest athletes college football had ever seen. Final score: LSU 29 – Louisville 9. Lamar Jackson finished with 153 yards passing and 33 yards rushing for easily his worst performance ever.
However, Louie was only getting started. What would happen over the next ten months would shatter us to our core and leave us in the darkness of New Louie’s shadow to this day
But before we get there, let’s first study the evolution of Louie.
According to UofL Athletics’ site, the state bird, the northern cardinal, was chosen as the school’s mascot in 1913. Carrie Daniels, Director of Archives at UofL, explains that in the 1950s the cheerleading team created the first human-sized cardinal costume because they thought, “We need a mascot.”
Thus, Louie was born.
In the 1960s Louie was joined by “Lady Bird,” his papier-mâché-headed companion.
In the late 1970s as Louisville’s basketball program began to take off, Louie was given his first makeover which included a full cardinal bird costume.
1970s Louie would remain virtually unchanged until 2001 when recently appointed AD Tom Jurich had the mascot updated to reflect the school’s logo updates of 2000. This gave us our newest and most dapper looking Louie.
Old Louie, AKA “Handsome Louie,” would go on to be Louisville’s most prolific and successful mascot. In his reign from 2001 to December 21st, 2016 (whereabouts unknown), UofL athletics reached heights it had never seen before. Louie helped cheer on his Cardinals to a National Championship, 3 Men’s Final Fours,, 2 BCS Bowl Wins, a Heisman Trophy Win, 2 Runner-Up Finishes in Women’s Basketball, 3 CWS appearances, and he guided UofL from the C-USA all the way to the ACC, just to name a few of the major accomplishments during his dynasty.
He also won the National Cheerleaders Association's Most Collegiate Mascot award for himself in 2004.
Oh, and did I mention he could jump out of airplanes and parachute down to the football field?
Old Louie ruled.
Jump ahead to December 21st, 2016 when Old Louie was officially reported missing, and its easy to figure out that the end of Old Louie’s dynasty marked the beginning of a dark period for Louisville athletics.
In the proceeding months, Louisville’s men’s basketball team would lose as a two-seed in the Round of 32 and the women’s team would get ousted unsarcastically early in the Sweet 16. But New Louie wouldn’t overplay his hand and risk early exposure before his first great trick had been played, so he threw us a red herring and allowed the baseball team to go to Omaha for a fourth time.
Then September came. We should have known he was up to something when he made Rick Pitino wear an extremely tiny Lamar Jackson jersey on the set of College Gameday and forced poor Lee Corso to shove his demon head on.
Less than two weeks later Rick Pitino would be fired as the underbelly of the college basketball world was (sort of) exposed by the FBI. In the following month, Old Louie’s father, Tom Jurich, would also be fired.
Now with New Louie fully in charge, the football team began its decline even with its Heisman Trophy Winner. The men’s basketball team would roll into Lexington looking for another rivalry win and would walk out with an ass kicking to the tune of a 90-61 defeat. One day later, the football team would fall to a Mississippi State team missing its starting quarterback, defensive coordinator, and head coach in the Gator Bowl.
I sincerely hope by now you can see where this thing is going. No? Okay, let’s keep going.
The men’s basketball team would finish the season with a 22-14 record. Even with a #38 ranking in the Ri, they became the highest ranked RPI team to ever miss the NCAA tournament. They would go on to lose in NIT quarterfinal Mississippi State. But before any of that bad stuff could happen they got to blow a 4-point lead with 0.9 seconds left in the game.
The UofL women’s team did everything they could to not let New Louie hold them back, only to lose at the hands of some questionable non-calls to, you guessed it, Mississippi State. MSU would go on to lose in the National Championship to a Notre Dame team that UofL defeated twice by a combined 35 points.
I know it’s already getting old at this point but you have to suffer with me.
Then baseball rolls around only for the team to its first Super Regional since 2012. And, as we all know, the football season is not going particularly well.
Then 2018 happened.
Moving on.
Then Louisville’s men’s team loses in the first round of the NCAA tournament to a Richard Pitino-led Minnesota. New Louie’s not even trying to be cute with it at this point.
But the women’s team was able to put together an incredible season and get a 1-seed in the tournament. That’s good right? Well not when one of the greatest sports dynasties of all time is named as your 2-seed. Louisville ends up losing to said 2-seed in the Elite 8.
Surely New Louie has been figured out at this point. But just in case there was any doubt he throws in another CWS to get us off his scent.
Once again, he has an awful trick up his sleeve. But this time, he’s going to really play the long game on his next devastating trick.
New Louie allows first-year head football coach Scott Satterfield engineer an unbelievable bounce-back season capped off by an impressive bowl win over (AGAIN) Mississippi State.
But this was all a cruel ploy, as we now know, because as the men’s team prepared for its first deep run with Chris Mack, the women’s team appeared to be in top form again, and the baseball team started the season ranked #1, New Louie was about to launch his worst trick yet: Cancelling Every Single Sport in the World.
If you haven’t figured out by now what any of this means, I can’t help you.
But I will try anyways because you’re that important and we all need help in this difficult time: We need to bring Old Louie back as soon as possible so that he can restore peace on Floyd Street and in the entire world.
Join the debate on this here: https://louisville.forums.rivals.com/threads/bring-back-old-louie.50212/
