Air Force, Louisville Have Dozens of Texas Ties

By Bo Carter

Air Force football is based in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Louisville Cardinals hail from Kentucky distilling country on the Commonwealth-Indiana border. Both programs have roots that run deeply in Texas football yore as they prepare for the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl at SMU’s Ford Stadium on Dec. 28.

Two of the obvious Air Force memorable quarterbacks are Beau and Blane Morgan of nearby Carrollton, Texas, and Trinity Christian Academy in Addison. They even played their high school careers in Tom Landry Stadium on the TCA campus.

Beau Morgan now serves as a managing director at Roscoe Martin LLC after playing in the NFL from 1997-99 with the neighboring Dallas Cowboys, competing one additional year in with Memphis Maniax in the XFL and working as an analyst for four seasons with the Mountain West Television Network.

Blane Morgan just completed his second season as head coach at Lamar in Beaumont, Texas, after working as offensive coordinator at both Air Force and San Diego State.

But Louisville shares numerous Texas connections with the Falcons in such areas as current freshman lineman Travis Taylor of Houston and several other Texans who have competed for the Cardinals.

Though U of L primarily is noted for its decades-long basketball prowess, football coaches Vince Gibson (a Birmingham, Ala., native and former Florida State standout) took several Kansas State and Cardinals teams to the Southwest area and Texas while he served as head coach of the Wildcats and Cards from 1967-79.

Popular ESPN analyst Lee Corso guided the 1969-72 Cardinals and helped his squads remain competitive in the Missouri Valley Conference, which was based for a time in Dallas under legendary Texas Tech head coach and MVC commissioner the late DeWitt Weaver Sr. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Louisville was a regular foe of then-MVC opponents North Texas and West Texas A&M (then West Texas State). Corso even took Louisville to the 1970 MVC championship, an 8-3-1 overall record and a berth in the Pasadena Bowl. 

Cardinals fans also have fond memories of Dallas from 1986 when Louisville’s vaunted men’s basketball team captured the NCAA Championship at the late, great Reunion Arena.

Air Force and Louisville also have a solid history of playing in bowls based in Texas as the Falcons have played in the co-most (five along with Houston) Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowls when the game was held in Fort Worth in the 2007-15 era. AFA had berths in its first postseason game in Dallas in 1959 – a 0-0 tie with TCU – before downing Texas 24-16 in the 1985 Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston.

The Falcons then played in three consecutive Liberty Bowls from 1989-91 before returning to Texas in 2007 to tangle with California for the first time in the 2007 Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl and for a return engagement in Fort Worth with the Golden Bears in 2015.

Louisville also is no stranger to bowl berths in the Lone Star State with its first-ever bowl trip to El Paso in a 34-20 triumph over Drake in the 1957 Sun Bowl before a couple of near-miss invitations to Texas postseason specials in the 1990s and 2000s. The Cardinals virtually competed on the Louisiana-Texas border in a 24-14 Independence Bowl loss to Louisiana Tech in 1977.

And interestingly, though not related to Texas ties, the Cardinals will be facing a team besides Mississippi State in a bowl tussle for the first time since 2016. The Bulldogs and Cards hooked up in a 2017 TaxSlayer Gator Bowl bout in 2017 and again in the 2019 Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn.

Both schools have expressed appreciation for Texas hospitality in recent days and are looking forward to their first visits to SMU’s Ford Stadium Tuesday.

For ticketing and additional information, please access Firstresponderbowl.com.