Whomp on fools until nothing remains: Why Louisville's schedule is perfect

Jon Bois, SBNation Posted: Tuesday, September 3, 2013, 10:42 AM

If you watched 24, and you knew what was good for you, you stopped watching after the fifth of its eight seasons.

It was always a fundamentally silly collection of Tom Clancyan pulp for the American Idol set, but it at least answered each of its dumbly implausible twists with an underpinning of logic that tried to keep our suspensions of disbelief in place. The first lady just got stabbed in the stomach by a computer hacker in a dusty old warehouse, but the president is being removed from office by due process of the 25th Amendment. There is literally a fortress full of dozens of terrorists with automatic rifles in a nameless Los Angeles suburb, but when Jack Bauer infiltrates it and kills every last one of them, he does so with a realistic number of rounds in his clip, because junior, this ain't some kind of fairy tale.

The tail end of 24's run is a fascinating exhibit of what happens when a show's writers are transparently, and without question, completely out of any ideas, never mind new ones ... and then proceed to write 72 more hourlong episodes.

That Bauer had already kidnapped Logan a few seasons earlier should tell you how completely out of ideas they were. It was perhaps the dumbest show in the history of dramatic television.

Predictably, though, I'm going to sit here and try to tell you that these seasons were miracles. It's like when your dad remodels the kitchen and he gives 8-year-old you a tack hammer and handful of nails to bang into some scrap wood, because he knows that's really all you want to do. So, I hope, is the 2013 season of the Louisville Cardinals.

In Saturday's opener, the Cardinals threw for 416 yards, ran for 199 more, and stomped the Ohio Bobcats 49-7. Meanwhile, six of Louisville's 2013 opponents lost their openers, three of which were complete blowouts. Of the 10 FBS teams left on the schedule, seven finished last season with losing records, and six of those were in not particularly great conferences.

I want to make clear that I am not guaranteeing, nor necessarily even predicting, an undefeated season. Rutgers or Cincinnati could beat Louisville, as they very nearly did in 2012. So, maybe, could FIU on the right day.

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Whomp on fools until nothing remains: Why Louisville's schedule is perfect