How Denny Crum left lasting impact on Louisville football and other Cardinals' programs

Denny Crum's iconic status as a national championship-winning coach extended beyond Louisville's men's basketball program.

Programs across U of L's campus were able to benefit from Crum's success. His impact was highlighted Tuesday following the news of his death at 86 years old.

Prior to the Cardinals' Battle of the Barrel rivalry baseball game against Vanderbilt on Tuesday evening, a moment of silence was held for Crum. The Hall of Fame basketball coach who led the Cards from 1971-2001 also got to see an athletic dorm named after him in September.

"Not only was he a great basketball mind but he was an even better person," said U of L women's basketball coach Jeff Walz in a statement on Twitter.

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Louisville football coach Jeff Brohm, who was in attendance for the baseball game, also expressed his condolences Tuesday. Long before he took charge of the Cardinals' football team, though, the program struggled and benefitted from what Crum built with the men's basketball program.

"For a very long, very long time, Louisville was one of the few college teams that revenue for basketball exceeded that for football,” said former longtime Louisville sports information director Kenny Klein. “When I say revenue, it's not just ticket sales. It's not just TV. It's everything: donations, the ticket sales, everything involved. So, basketball was always kind of the kingpin so to speak.”

Prior to Howard Schnellenberger, Bobby Petrino and Charlie Strong, Louisville's football team had never won more than nine games. The late 1970s were especially tough with the best season being a 7-4 record in 1978. In 1980, months after Louisville's men's basketball team won its first national championship, the football team went 5-6.

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The sub-.500 record came as the program was exceeding its annual budget by $300,000, according to a Courier Journal article from 1980.

Former Louisville athletic director Bill Olsen told The Courier Journal on Tuesday the lack of football success and revenue had become so bad a member on the board of trustees proposed the university get rid of the football program if it didn’t start turning a profit. The trustee, Wallace Grafton Jr., later apologized for his "premature" comments, saying he didn't realize the football program's financial woes had already been addressed.

To help generate revenue for U of L's football team, the university was able to leverage the success of men's basketball to elevate the football program's financial status. In 1984, after Freedom Hall, the men's basketball team's home court at the time, was refurbished, a mandate was put in place. Anyone who wanted to keep their priority seating for men's hoops had to become a season ticket holder for football as well. When Olsen ran the idea by Crum, he offered his support and co-signed the initiative. Olsen said the new requirement took football season ticket sales from about 4,000 to 5,000 to around 14,000 to 16,000.

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“We increased football overnight to the same number of season tickets that we had in basketball," Olsen said.

Now Brohm, in his first year at the helm, looks to begin a highly-anticipated football season with the Cardinals.

"I am heartbroken and saddened by the passing of Coach Denny Crum, a true Louisville and coaching icon," Brohm said in a statement posted to social media Tuesday. "Growing up a Cardinal fan, he was a role model for us all in how he carried himself and elevated our basketball program to unprecedented heights.

"... Coach Crum never stopped serving this community, and his impact will last forever."

When Schnellenberger, another Louisville native, was a candidate for the Cardinals' head football coach position following the 1984 season, Crum was one of the many people who reached out and offered his support. Years later, Schnellenberger told Olsen Crum's encouragement and offer to be an advocate meant the world to him.

“Never did Denny Crum ever say no to anything that helped the athletic department,” said Olsen, who was one of Crum's assistant coaches before becoming Louisville's athletic director in 1980. “He supported all the sports.”

Reach Louisville football, women's basketball and baseball beat writer Alexis Cubit at acubit@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter at @Alexis_Cubit.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Denny Crum, HOF college basketball coach, helped Louisville football