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—The Louisville baseball team
dropped its fifth straight Thursday night at Miami. The Cards and ‘Canes will play game two tonight at 7 in Coral Gables.
—It’s now officially official: The men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments
are expanding to 76 teams in 2027. Barf.
One of the primary reasons this change that no one wants to happen is actually happening? More beer commercials!
Am told by sources a big reason for this number is the NCAA expanding the amount of commercials allowed during NCAAT games in order to manufacture more revenue. The beer/liquor industry will be at the front of the line.
https://t.co/F5u7CgsKRt
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander)
May 7, 2026
—Five former Louisville women’s basketball players will
start the 2026 WNBA season on rosters.
—Craig Meyer
writes about Mark Pope and Kentucky’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad offseason.
—Andy Katz’s first 76-team
bracket prediction (barf) has Louisville as a 4-seed.
—Joe Lunardi
has the Cards as a 3-seed.
—Dan Wolken
writes that the problem with expanding the NCAA Tournament isn’t the number of teams, it’s allowing Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti to run roughshod over college sports when they’ve been ineffective leaders at a time of existential crisis.
If you want to take something like the NCAA tournament that did not need an intervention and turn it into an unwieldy mess that mostly caters to their agenda, Sankey and Petitti seem to be highly effective. With an unmatched combination of leverage and shamelessness, they can snap their fingers and turn NCAA president Charlie Baker into their errand boy.
But when it comes to fixing a real problem — like the rise of $20 million college basketball rosters while only a handful of programs even bring in $20 million in revenue — they are suddenly helpless and out of answers, reduced to groveling at the feet of politicians to rescue their industry from its own lack of courage and discipline.
If college presidents had any wits about them when it comes to athletics, here’s what they would do: Sit Petitti, Sankey and the other power conference commissioners in a room and deliver an ultimatum to get college sports fixed over the next year or they will all be replaced. End of story.
Until then, leave the NCAA tournament alone. Stop fighting over
the right number for the College Football Playoff. Put every ancillary issue on the back-burner. If rising player costs and an unregulated transfer portal are truly as urgent and out of control as you claim, the focus needs to be entirely on tearing the current system down and coming up with a better one.
The sad truth, however, is that the current leadership group is probably not up to the task. The power conferences’ big innovation over the last two years was settling the House v. NCAA antitrust case and creating the College Sports Commission to set an enforceable revenue-sharing cap while separating real NIL deals from the booster collective nonsense.
Instead, it took about 30 minutes before schools within their own ranks started poking holes in the settlement to try and gain a competitive advantage. Fast-forward nearly a year, and not only has nothing changed,
the environment has arguably gotten more out of control. Collectives are still going strong, the CSC operates under constant threat of being sued, tampering is a fact of life and administrators and coaches laugh about the ineffectiveness of the revenue-sharing cap. College sports now exists as a vassal to the mood of attorney Jeffrey Kessler.
—The CJ looks at
five U of L football transfer portal imports who could be x-factors in 2026.
—L&N Stadium is the
fifth most hostile football stadium in the ACC.
—The Southern Hang podcast
talks with legendary trainer Kenny McPeek.
—The Field of 68 crew
discussed (YouTube) the best and worst college basketball hires of the last decade. I’ll give you 8-52 guesses as to who everyone agreed was the worst.
—Great catch.
Richie lacing up the dunking cardinal bird Eric Emanuel sneakers in
#TheBear prequel
@CardChroniclepic.twitter.com/PPaJecTg1o
— Jonathan Lustig (@jlustig23)
May 7, 2026
—Brett McMurphy’s
first bowl projections for 2026 have Louisville facing Houston in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
—Golden Tempo is the latest Kentucky Derby winner to skip the Preakness, sending an unmistakable message to that race and the Triple Crown as a whole. Pat Forde
writes that the time to adapt or die has come.
—State of Louisville takes a look at
U of L baseball’s pitching stats since 2007. It’s pretty clear that something has to change.
—A number of the biggest names in college basketball coaching
aren’t thrilled with the NCAA Tournament expansion news.
“I am adamantly opposed. It’s totally unnecessary,”
Gonzaga coach Mark Few told CBS Sports. Few, who has never missed an NCAA Tournament in more than a quarter of a century running the Bulldogs, was just
named to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame last month.
“It’s the dumbing down of the regular season, which is sad,” Few said. “We’re out here trying to generate more interest in the regular season and expansion doesn’t help. That’s where we’ve been struggling. Plus, the [NCAA Tournament] unit shares, what’s happening there? Don’t screw with something when you already know it’s great. The tournament is great as is.”
…
“What I think makes the tournament special is the qualification for it,” Hurley told CBS Sports. “You don’t want the regular season to be rendered meaningless and to take away from November, December, January, February. The qualification process makes the regular season intense and pressure-packed. It should be a privilege to play in the tournament, not a right, and obviously if it expands too much and you don’t have to have a real good season to make it, that would take away from the tournament. Does it get too big?”
…
“I am a big believer in the idea that if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, and I think that applies to the NCAA Tournament,” Calipari told CBS Sports. “Having said that, if we are to expand, my hope is that at least half the spots are held for non-Power Four teams. If they do that, we are making the decision for the right reasons. As someone who has been both David, and won some, and Goliath, and lost some, that’s what makes this tournament special. We can’t afford to lose that special piece of our sport.”
Everyone recognizes there are major problems with college basketball right now. No one believes any of those problems have anything to do with the NCAA Tournament. Naturally, the one major change the people in charge of the sport decide to make is to expand the NCAA Tournament.
—Karter Knox has officially
signed with Louisville.
—The Louisville softball team
took a tough 6-5 loss to Stanford in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament on Thursday. The Cards will find out where they’re headed for the NCAA Tournament on Sunday.
—Basketball Under Review looks at
the international revolution currently happening in college hoops.
—Dan Issel doesn’t lie.
Dan Issel on why Kentucky basketball hasn't won a NCAA Title since 2012:
"With NIL, we can't cheat like we used to… we need Boogie to kick in more NIL money."
@MichelleDBeadle |
@ChandlerParsons |
@TeamLou23pic.twitter.com/NARTez155I
— Run It Back (@RunItBackFDTV)
May 6, 2026
—Louisville’s 502 Circle
is now Floyd Street Media.
—Ryan Conwell and Mikel Brown Jr.
will both be full participants at this year’s NBA Draft Combine. They’re the first Cards to participate in the combine since 2019.
—U of L Golf Club
will host a 2026 NCAA Women’s Tournament regional.
—Fun stuff here.
Louisville’s Best Sets From The ‘25-‘26 College Basketball Season
1. Step Up Decoy Flare
2. Shallow Shuffle Lob
3. Elbow Peja
4. Misdirection Cross (vs 2-3)
5. Elbow Gut Zoom
6. Flare Wide Shuffle Lob
7. Away Veer Baseline Stagger
8. Iverson Curl Chest
9. Stack Out Down STS
10.…
pic.twitter.com/mdgy7478nw
— Sam Dailey (@SamDailey)
May 5, 2026
—I wrote about Florida and Todd Golden for SB Nation
here.
—The NCAA men’s basketball rules committee
is discussing a move from two halves to four quarters.
—And finally, I was very sad to hear of the passing of former Louisville defensive lineman Randy Salmon, who played for Charlie Strong during the 2010 and 2011 seasons. He had been coaching at Stockbridge High School in Georgia. May he rest in peace.
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