Jeff Brohm is home at Louisville, and he can’t afford to fail now

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It was the spring of 2022, and despite how his words sounded when replayed on the local news later, Jeff Brohm was just trying to be polite.

Brohm was back in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, speaking to 100 or so alums of Flaget High School — “Where Paul Hornung, Howard Schnellenberger and my dad went,” Brohm noted. He spent the better part of an hour talking football before he got the question — the one he always seemed to get.

“When are you coming back to coach at Louisville?”

Brohm was Kentucky’s “Mr. Football” in 1988, then became a star quarterback at Louisville. He worked as an assistant for the Cardinals under Bobby Petrino for six seasons, too, before moving on to head coaching jobs at Western Kentucky and Purdue. He was offered the head job at Louisville after Petrino was fired in 2019, but he demurred — “Bad timing,” he said — and for the next four years, Cardinals fans longed for a second chance to bring Brohm home.

And so the question came again — this time from a nice gentleman — and Brohm didn’t want to be rude.

“I love this town,” Brohm said. “I’m an alumnus of Louisville. So, anything can happen in the future.”

Now, he might’ve offered a few important caveats before answering — like the fact that Louisville already had a coach and that Brohm already had another job. But the event had been so lighthearted that, truly, Brohm didn’t give his reply much thought. Nor did he think about the reporter with the camera.

“I talked for an hour and 10 minutes and it was the only time I referenced Louisville,” Brohm recalled. “And that’s all I heard about after.”

Brohm insisted he wasn’t insulting Purdue, and he wasn’t angling for the Louisville job. It was a lot of hubbub over nothing. Really.

“And then sure enough,” Brohm said, “it actually happened a year later.”

Yes, Brohm is finally back in his hometown, coaching at his alma mater, much to the delight of the innumerable fans who’d pined for his homecoming for years. When Satterfield left for Cincinnati at the end of last season, Brohm was offered the job again, and this time, it all felt right.

Of course, those dream jobs always feel magical at first, yet it doesn’t always turn out to be such a happy reunion. For every Steve Spurrier or Kirby Smart, who went home and won a national title, there are others, like Scott Frost, who withered under the outsized expectations.

When it doesn’t work out, it’s not just a job that’s lost.

“When you’re coaching somewhere else, you put in the work, but if it doesn’t work out, hey, I can always go home,” Brohm said. “Well, this is home.”

It’s something Brohm said he thinks about nearly every day now. After years of anticipation, he finally has the job he always wanted. He can’t afford to fail.

BROHM ARRIVED TO immense fanfare in Louisville, but he also saw a ticking clock. Everyone loved him the day he was hired because he’d done so much for the city and the school over the years, but eventually, there would be real data points on his job performance, and he can’t afford a misstep.

“All the positivity now is because we haven’t lost a game yet,” Brohm said. “I’ve been around some good days here, and there’s been tremendous fan support at all levels when you’re doing great things. We want to get that going as fast as we can.”

It’s the same balance Mario Cristobal understood when he opted to leave a cozy gig at Oregon to return to Miami with a plan to resurrect his alma mater. The problem, as he saw it, was a massive schism between the size of the job and the optimism of Miami’s fans.

“The clear fact, the fact that’s as clear as the day is long, is Miami didn’t get to this spot overnight,” Cristobal said, “and Miami isn’t getting out of this spot overnight.”

That’s Cristobal’s tagline for the program in Year 2. But when he first arrived, the fan base was so overjoyed at the thought that their prodigal son, who’d won two national titles at Miami as a player, would restore the program’s past glory that there wasn’t much room for the cold, hard truth.

The Hurricanes finished 2022 with a 5-7 record with embarrassing losses to Middle Tennessee and rival Florida State. After the season, a sizable chunk of Cristobal’s first staff departed, as did a number of players. The excitement that followed his arrival in Coral Gables had quickly turned into skepticism.

Cristobal saw most of it coming, the inevitable struggles, and it nearly convinced him to stay at Oregon.

The hours, the pressure, the expectations, he thrives on that, he said, but he knew it would take its toll on his family. It was a big risk.

But it was home.

“I don’t want to go to the grave without Miami winning,” Cristobal said. “I don’t. I would’ve had a lot of regret. I know if I’d said no, the ship would’ve sailed, and the next time it came around, it might’ve been too late.”

It’s the double-edged sword of being a program’s favorite son. The often sizable challenges of the present are viewed through the glories of past success, and when reality sets in, things can get ugly.

Dave Wannstedt had won Super Bowls in the NFL, so he seemed like an ideal hire at Pitt, where he’d starred as a player. Six years later, he was fired after a 7-5 campaign.

Jim Harbaugh has taken Michigan to back-to-back College Football Playoffs, but that success came on the heels of a dismal 2020 campaign that forced him to take a pay cut. That Michigan didn’t fire him rankled a sizable contingent of Wolverines fans who’d once celebrated his return.

Frost was supposed to be the miracle that returned Nebraska to greatness. He’d coached UCF to an undefeated season in 2017, and he had his pick of plumb jobs in the aftermath. But he wanted to go home, to a place where he’d quarterbacked the Huskers to a 24-2 record in two seasons. His coaching tenure there ended after an embarrassing home loss to Georgia Southern that dropped his record at Nebraska to 16-31.

So yes, Brohm isn’t assuming he has an inch of runway at Louisville.

“When you take a little more pride in what you’re doing, it makes you work a little harder, take a little more time figuring it out so you don’t let people down,” Brohm said. “There are a lot of guys on our staff with local connections, and they want to win here, and they want to win now.”

JOSH HEIRD INSISTS he had more than one candidate for the job after Satterfield departed for Cincinnati. Yes, Brohm was at the top of the list — but not just because of his local ties. He was a heck of a coach, had just led Purdue to the Big Ten title game, had been to seven bowl games in nine years as a head coach.

Of course, Heird also admits it would’ve been a problem if he’d gone in another direction.

“If it wasn’t Jeff,” Heird said, “whoever it was would be compared to Jeff from Day 1.”

Heird actually joked at Brohm’s introductory news conference that “for the last 12 months, you’ve made my life miserable.” Yeah, there was a bit of pressure to get the prodigal son back onto campus.

Heck, Louisville defensive lineman Ashton Gillotte had started following a Twitter account with the handle, @BringBrohmHome. The account’s owner has a website, too, with flight tracker data and video of Brohm’s playing days. The account’s bio now notes the success of the initiative: “Destiny typed into existence.”

The Brohm effect has Louisville as excited for the 2023 season as fans have been for any year since Lamar Jackson was on campus, with season ticket sales already up more than 20%. Running back Jawhar Jordan said he gets approached at the grocery store now by fans wanting to talk about the team.

“There’s constant people,” Brohm said. “There’s more speaking functions and going out in the community and it’s all important to do that.”

That’s largely meant his wife and kids have enjoyed the perks of being back in Louisville. Brohm’s been on the clock since the moment he accepted the job.

“I tell them I’m glad they’re having fun,” Brohm said. “I’m working my ass off here.”

If it’s time-consuming, Brohm has at least been met with something akin to a red carpet at local high schools, booster club meetings and fan fests. These people know him, and that brings instant cache. That’s the real value of coming home. There’s no sales pitch needed to convince fans to get excited or donors to write a big check or the administration to buy-in on a plan to get better.

Spurrier remembers arriving at Florida in 1990 to a far less optimistic welcome. The Gators had finished 7-5 the year before — and had actually lost at least five games in four straight seasons before he took the job.

Spurrier’s arrival wasn’t accompanied by lofty expectations, so he invited them.

“Some people thought I was a little cocky or brash,” Spurrier said, “because I told them we could win the SEC.”

In his first season, the Gators went 9-2. In his second season, they played in the Sugar Bowl. And for the next 10 years after that, Florida won at least nine games and finished ranked in the top 12 every season.

“There was the pressure I put on myself and the team,” Spurrier said. “We could be Alabama and Georgia and Tennessee and all those guys, but we had to believe. When you believe you can do it, your chances get a lot better.”

Brohm wants fans and his players to believe, too, so he’s not hiding from expectations. He’s embracing them. He’s seen what the town is like when Louisville’s good, when the whole program is humming and the city is along for the ride. To make that happen again in his hometown — what could be better?

So yes, there’s pressure. No one’s set higher expectations than he has.

He grew up here. His family, his wife’s family — they’re from here, too. His kids love Louisville. There’s nowhere else Brohm would rather be. He can’t mess that up.

“The last thing I want to do is be a failure and lose and lose the name I built there because we didn’t win,” Brohm said. “It motivates me to work harder, so that if for some reason it doesn’t work, I can look in the mirror and say, ‘OK, there’s nothing I could have done more to get this done.'”