In the hours and days after Louisville fired head coach Steve Kragthorpe, one of the first names to pop up on the rumor mill radar screen for the opening was Florida’s Charlie Strong.
The defensive coordinator’s name has been attached to a couple of other openings -- he was rumored to be a contender in Memphis before the Tigers hired LSU assistant Larry Porter -- but it seems as if the strongest possibility right now would be the Cardinals’ job.
That being said, there’s been no contact between the two sides. At least not yet.
Strong’s agent, Nathan Whitaker, tells the Louisville Courier-Journal that he has not heard from the school, although that could be a matter of semantics as a search firm could’ve done the initial reaching out.
Or, it could just be that the Cardinals are willing to allow Strong to concentrate on that “little” game he’s got going on Saturday and will begin earnest conversations with the worthy candidate after the weekend.
The latter most definitely seems to be the case as athletic director Tom Jurich said early on in the process that he would not hold talks with coaches whose teams still have games to be played.
So, look for the Strong-to-Louisville talk to heat in the 48-72 hours after the SEC Championship game. And look for Strong -- finally and belatedly -- to get that head-coaching position, whether it be Louisville or elsewhere.