2013 Sugar Bowl: Louisville claims Big Easy for Big East

The best moment from Wednesday night’s Sugar Bowl didn’t happen during the game. Sure, it was a great night for Louisville -- a team that played its butt off and pulled off the biggest upset, odds wise, in BCS bowl history. But something even better happened after the game.

In the sea of people on the field, Charlie Strong found his wife. And the look on his face when he did was absolutely priceless.

Also, here’s Charlie Strong with confetti sticking to his head, via ESPN:

Louisville punched first, with Terell Floyd running back a tipped Florida pass just 15 seconds in, and very rarely stopped punching after that. The biggest lead was 24-10 in the second, followed by a 33-10 Cards advantage in the fourth.

This was not flagged, despite the Louisville receiver being completely down and receiving a helmet-to-helmet shot. It doesn’t look like he even has the ball and is in fact engaging instead in some sort of fertility dance. But it’s Matt Elam, so these things happen, I guess!

Matt Elam does this kind of thing all the time. Here’s a look at some of his work so far this year.

Louisville won the Sugar Bowl coin toss and deferred to the second half. The ref asked Florida if it wanted the ball, which is a question with a pretty obvious answer even when the game isn’t being held in a dome.

Florida might as well have answered, “No.”

It’s been a pretty good few weeks for Louisville athletics, hasn’t it? The Cardinals won the Big East football crown with a road victory over Rutgers, they scored an ACC bid over UConn and Cincinnati, they kept their football coach despite serious overtures from Tennessee, and they continue to watch said coach reel in big-time recruits. (And, of course, their basketball team looks great.)

In other words, Louisville has enough momentum at the moment to survive a 23-6 loss to Florida in the Sugar Bowl. The Cardinals are still young (29 freshmen, redshirt freshmen and sophomores on the two-deep) and still a work in progress, and they are probably in over their heads against a Florida squad that has sacrificed any and all aesthetics in favor of brutality and, eventually, victory.