Scott Satterfield has burned a lot of goodwill at Louisville in a short period of time.
Maybe it was the Good Morning America rant about kids being safer in a worldwide pandemic playing for his team. Perhaps it was the 2-6 start to the 2020 season. Maybe it was the turnovers, the play-calling, or multiple losses to pedestrian teams.
Whatever it was for you, your opinion of Scott Satterfield has likely changed over the course of the last four months.
Satterfield took the podium for the first time as the Louisville football head coach and proved right from the jump that he was going to be the antithesis of Bobby Petrino.
While Petrino was cranky and monotone, Satterfield was exciting and country as hell. Petrino infamously didn’t want players coming to his office, or even finding where it was located; Satterfield lets players come in, sits ’em down rubs their back, and gives them a warm glass of milk.
Most fans are smart enough to not read too much into little things, but the product on the field in 2019 was hard to ignore. Petrino didn’t leave the cupboard bare by any means, but Satterfield signed up to coach a team that lacked talent and depth at critical positions. He took over and did a damn impressive job, leading Louisville to an 8-5 record on the heels of one of the ugliest seasons in school history.
Between Satterfield appearing to be a genuinely good dude from the outside looking in, and the entire coaching staff receiving rave reviews across the board, the honeymoon phase lasted quite a while for Satt Daddy and Louisville fans.
A shifting of the narrative
Over the course of the season, both on and off the field, Satterfield lost a lot of the benevolent approval that he established on the front end. However, after the latest report from Josh Kendall of The Athletic, I think he can kiss much of what was left goodbye.
If you are not subscribed to The Athletic, without giving away all of the juicy details, Satterfield, reportedly, is scheduled to meet soon, in-person, to interview for the vacant South Carolina job.
The rumors began circulating over the weekend that Satterfield was a longshot candidate for the gig, which was recently vacated by Will Muschamp.
Now, the rumors are full on reports that Satterfield is not only showing interest, but will be traveling to Columbia soon to conduct an interview.
Two hours after the Athletic article, Louisville AD Vince Tyra denied that there was truth to the report.
No matter what way you spin it, however, this is a bad look.
Satterfield had the chance to turn down the gig, his agent is clearly still shopping him, and his name is still coming up.
But, even if the reports are false and Satterfield isn’t considering leaving for a different gig, at the very least to have his name come up in consideration feels like an attempt at a money grab.
If you are unfamiliar with the inner-workings of college football coaching vacancies and the way that these things often go, coaches shop around for other gigs, evaluate what they are worth on the market, and then attempt to use that as leverage for contract extensions and raises. No different than any other job, really, aside from the fact that it is high-profile, there are agents and middlemen involved, and in the college football world, the negotiations are ruthless.
If it doesn’t piss you off that Louisville’s coach is attempting to leverage what is currently a 3-6 (THREE. AND SIX) season into a contract extension, remember that this is all happening during a world-wide fricking pandemic.
Back in April, more than a quarter of the athletic department was laid off or furloughed in order to cut costs during unprecedented times.
It’s understandable that a coach would look elsewhere to try and afford himself and his family the best situation possible. But to do so during a year when a pandemic ravaged your department’s budget and a quarter of your co-workers were let go while you’re sitting on a fat stack of cash is a terrible look.
On top of all of that, this sets the precedent that Satterfield sets expectations for his players that he cannot even uphold himself.
“I am so proud of him,” Satterfield said of junior wide receiver Tutu Atwell on Saturday. “You see all these good players across the country opting-out and he opted-in. He hasn’t practiced much the last two or three weeks but he said, ‘Coach I want to play.”
Satterfield was not directly taking a shot, but these comments were made just days after encouraging running back Javian Hawkins– who opted out and signed with an agent– to stay in school and not pursue a professional career.
Surmise it to say that the optics of a multi-millionaire coach telling an unpaid athlete to stay in school, only to have his name floated for another job only a week later are not the best.
As Louisville turns over a new leaf in 2021, I fully expect Satterfield to still be the head coach. However, Cardinals fans do not take too kindly to being a pawn in a game where they so desperately want to be a much more relevant piece.
Satterfield could make amends, prove himself to be the coach many of his colleagues believe him to be and have a long, successful career in Louisville. However, he will now have to do so without being in the good graces of most of the fan base.
