If you believe coaching has anything to do with the outcome of football games, then you have to pick Kentucky to beat Louisville on Sunday afternoon in Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. The Wildcats have a proven head coach in Rich Brooks and a solid staff who knows how to prepare for big games. The Cardinals…well, what are we to make of Coach Steve Kragthorpe and his staff?

I can’t remember who pointed out to me that Kragthorpe might be U of L’s version of Bill Curry, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if that assessment might be right on the money. And that’s not entirely a bad thing, because I consider Curry to be one of the finest gentlemen I’ve ever been around.

Heck, when C.M. Newton lured Curry away from Alabama in 1990, I thought he had pulled off as big a coup as when he lured Rick Pitino away from the New York Knicks. Under Curry, the Crimson Tide had just won the Southeastern Conference and played in the Sugar Bowl. Plus, with his reputation for integrity, Curry seemed the ideal replacement for Jerry Claiborne.

My media pals in Alabama told me that Curry was more about style than substance and that he was grossly over-rated. I didn’t believe them, though. I thought it was just a matter of Curry being too sophisticated and polished for a fan base that didn’t trust a coach who wasn’t fluent in Southern Pigskin.

You know the language I’m talking about. It must be spoken with a drawl or a mumble. Proper English isn’t always required. The key is being able to convince the fans that you’re a good ol’ boy like Ralph “Shug” Jordan or Pat Dye or the greatest of them all, Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Curry has never been that kind of guy. He played in Atlanta for Bobby Dodd, who wasn’t popular in the Southern Coaching Fraternity because he believed in a high-tech passing game more than old-fashioned smash-mouth football. If anything, Dodd was more closely attuned to innovators such as Johnny Vaught of Ole Miss and Bud Wilkinson of Oklahoma than to the good ol’ boys.

Curry’s coaching pedigree also included pro stints under Vince Lombardi at Green Bay and Don Shula at Baltimore. From Lombardi, he learned the power of motivation and team work. From Shula, he learned the Xs and Os of building championship teams.

I was certain Curry was the perfect guy to build on what Claiborne’s foundation. Like Claiborne, he emphasized academics and citizenship. He was bright and articulate, frequently quoting philosophers and world leaders. I supported him until the very end, when he refused to changed his option offense to accommodate the obvious and special talents of freshman quarterback Tim Couch.

The problem with Curry, in retrospect, was that he didn’t have a system of his own. He relied too heavily on his co-coordinators. Sometimes you wondered who was really calling the shots at UK. Curry looked good on the sidelines, walking up and down in his blue sweatsuit, but he simply didn’t have a plan that worked.

So now comes Kragthorpe at U of L.

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In his first season, he took a team with, oh, 10-2 talent and turned it into a 6-6 debacle. Had it not been for quarterback Brian Brohm, whose consistency and stats were phenomenal under the circumstances, the Cardinals might have sunk back to the Ron Cooper days only a year after winning the Orange Bowl.

Just as I liked Curry, so do I like Kragthorpe. He looks good on the sidelines, he’s articulate, and he’s honest. From a public-relations standpoint, he’s a welcome diversion from the slimeball Bobby Petrino. But he also didn’t show anything last season that indicated he could win consistently in the Big East Conference.

Unlike Newton, who stayed with Curry too long, U of L AD Tom Jurich doesn’t have the luxury of time with Kragthorpe. Going back to the days of Howard Schnellenberger, it took U of L a longtime to build its football fan base to the point that Jurich could go ahead with plans to expand 42,000-seat Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.

But I still have doubts about how solid that fan base is. I think the Cards have a lot of front-runners in football — fans who want to be there when things are going well but will opt out for the St. James Art Fair or something if the team falls on hard times. I hope I’m wrong about that. I guess we’ll have to see what happens if the Cards lose their opener to the Cats.

The main thing Kragthorpe has going for him is Jurich’s support. Just as Newton lured Pitino away from the Knicks, so did Jurich lure Pitino to U of L when he resigned as coach of the Boston Celtics. In fact, Jurich’s track record in hiring coaches has been so good it’s off the charts. But for Jurich to continue supporting Kragthorpe, he needs to have some tangible results. Right now. This season.

Knowing Jurich, I’ll bet he already knows who’ll get the first call if Kragthorpe flounders again this season. In most cases, it’s probably not fair to judge any coach on only two seasons. But U of L has fallen so far so quickly that everything has been accelerated. Make no mistake, Kragthorpe is under more pressure to prove himself than almost any second-year coach in the nation.

He could look to Lexington for inspiration and guidance. Through his first four years, Brooks took more than his share of lumps. More than once, the fans and the media wrote him off. But he had a system in which he never lost faith. He recruited players who bought into it. The results have been stunning. Did anybody ever see the day coming when UK would be able to recruit two – not one, but two — highly-rated high-school quarterbacks from outside the state?

Based on what we know now, there’s no reason to believe that Kentucky won’t be better prepared than U of L. Forget all the speculation about talent, experience, and depth. It all comes down to preparation. We know Brooks knows how to do it, and we know the jury is still out on Kragthorpe.

Make it Cats 35, Cards 17.