It’s been nearly three months since Louisville took Papa John’s name off Cardinal Stadium and it sounds like the status quo will be that way for a while more.
Speaking to the Louisville Courier Journal on Thursday, Cardinals AD Vince Tyra sounded as though finding a new sponsor for the stadium naming rights is far from his (or anybody else at the school’s) mind at the moment.
“There’s no deadline for us on that,” Tyra said. “I think we wanted to, as we’ve said before, let’s get through the season, let’s kind of move our way into the spring and distance ourselves from it.”
Those comments probably are not to surprising considering the team is 2-5 at the moment and dealing with plenty of issues under Bobby Petrino but it’s notable in the grand scheme of things considering how visible Papa John’s was at the school previously and how much founder John Schnatter donated to the program.
It will be interesting to see just how much Louisville can get for their naming rights when they do go through a bid process given the school’s location, recent performance and the fact that these deals are few and far between at the Power Five level nowadays. Just recently, Colorado State secured a $37.7 million deal for their new on-campus venue while USC cashed the richest deal in college football for a whopping $70 million.
The Cardinals figure to be somewhere in between those two numbers but any little bit could help if the school wants to consider cutting ties to their head coach any time soon.
