5 Louisville

THE RULE OF thumb, especially when meeting with someone who is offering you the biggest job of your life, is to keep your cellphone in your pocket. Last Jan. 8, Steve Kragthorpe was granted an exemption. It was the day after Louisville coach Bobby Petrino had been lured to the NFL by the Atlanta Falcons, and Cardinals athletic director Tom Jurich was trying to persuade Kragthorpe, the coach at Tulsa, to move to Louisville.

They talked while dining at an Oklahoma City steak house, and midway through the meal Kragthorpe was given a number to dial. A phone rang in Louisville, and though he didn't recognize the number on his caller ID, a star quarterback pondering his future answered. "Hi, this is Steve Kragthorpe," said the voice in Brian Brohm's ear. "I'm going to be your new head coach."

Six days earlier Brohm had put on an MVP performance in the Orange Bowl--helping lead Louisville to its first BCS victory--but because he was being projected as a high first-round NFL draft pick, he was noncommittal about returning for his senior year. Kragthorpe says he called Brohm merely "to ease his anxieties" about Louisville's unsettled coaching situation, but he accomplished more than that. "That was the first time I had heard about who he was," says Brohm, who was doing a Google search of Kragthorpe when the phone rang. "He got me excited."

Considering the season Brohm had in 2006, that's saying something. Despite missing two games with ligament damage to his passing thumb, he threw for 3,094 yards on a team that finished 12-1. Petrino, regarded as one of the top offensive minds in the game, oversaw a unit that piled up 475.3 yards a game, second-best in Division I-A.

But, as Brohm found out, the 42-year-old Kragthorpe is not without impressive credentials. The son of a onetime BYU assistant who also landed head-coaching jobs at Idaho State and Oregon State, he was a college passer at Eastern New Mexico and West Texas State and the Buffalo Bills' quarterbacks coach before reviving a struggling Tulsa program. In 2003, his first year with the Golden Hurricane, he led a program that had won one game in each of the previous two seasons to its first bowl game in 12 years. Kragthorpe took Tulsa to three bowls in four seasons, and last year the offense ranked 24th in the country (388.5 yards per game).

A day after formally being introduced as the new coach, Kragthorpe was showing Brohm tape from his days at Tulsa and giving his quarterback a playbook. Brohm and his brother Jeff, the Cardinals' quarterbacks coach, liked what they saw. "[ Tulsa] threw a lot, spread the field and got the ball to their playmakers," says Brian. On Jan.�15, Brohm announced he was returning.

Kragthorpe plans to incorporate aspects of Petrino's trademark spread with the system he used at Tulsa, which features a quick-hit passing attack. With big-play wideouts Harry Douglas (70 catches, 1,265 yards, six touchdowns in 2006) and Mario Urrutia (58 catches, 973 yards, six TDs) on the receiving end, Brohm could lead Louisville to another BCS appearance and win the Heisman in the process. That would mean Kragthorpe's first recruiting effort had yielded a significant return.