Intrigue was in the air on the night of Dec. 6, 2022, at the Hilton Garden Inn near the Indianapolis airport. Clandestine operations were ongoing both inside and outside the mundane hotel on the city’s west side.
In a guest room, Louisville athletic director Josh Heird and Purdue football coach Jeff Brohm met secretly over a sack of Culver’s hamburgers. This was their initial discussion about bringing Brohm home to The ‘Ville, a mutual dream that previously had been delayed and nearly derailed by bad timing. Meanwhile, in the parking lot, spies lurked.
Brohm’s irrepressible son, Brady, was so excited by the possibility of Louisville hiring his dad that he refused to watch this play out from afar in West Lafayette. This was the day after Brady’s 18th birthday; for a kid born into the first family of Louisville football, the present of a lifetime was within reach. So Brady implored his uncle, Greg—Jeff’s right-hand man on the Purdue football staff—to drive him to the site of the meeting, some 75 miles away. The two Brohms rolled into the hotel lot, cased the joint, realized that nothing was going to happen that they could snoop on, went to Buffalo Wild Wings and then waited for the meeting to end.
Brady Brohm wasn’t the only potential security breach threatening this hush-hush mission. After the meeting was hurriedly arranged, Heird drove north on Interstate 65 from Louisville to Indy wearing Cardinals gear; on the way he decided he needed something more incognito in the Boilermakers’ backyard. Heird stopped at an outlet mall in Edinburgh, Ind., to buy a generic Adidas pullover—but upon pulling out his University of Louisville athletic department credit card to pay for it, the store clerk said, “Do you work there? I’m from Louisville.”
Heird was sure his cover would be blown, but the meeting stayed quiet for as long as it needed to—which, as it turned out, wasn’t very long. This was a coaching search that never went past its first choice, inevitably ending where it inevitably began.
On the night of Dec. 4, embattled coach Scott Satterfield informed Heird that he was talking to Cincinnati about its job opening. Heird assumed that meant Satterfield was leaving, so he stayed up until 3 a.m. making plans for that event. At 6:45 a.m. on Dec. 5, Heird texted Brohm’s agent, Shawn Freibert, to establish contact in case he had an opening to fill. Thirty minutes later, Satterfield called Heird to say he was leaving—a gift for a program that suddenly was freed from paying a buyout for a coach who had lost much of the fan base.
Heird and Brohm held their hamburger summit at the Garden Inn about 36 hours after Satterfield took the Cincinnati job (the pace was slowed just a bit by a commitment Freibert had in California). Less than 48 hours after that meeting, Brohm was introduced to a raucous standing ovation as the new head coach at the school he rooted for as a kid, played at as a collegian and worked at as an assistant.
Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski did what he could to keep the guy who had just taken the Boilermakers to their first Big Ten championship game. According to Oscar Brohm, Jeff’s dad, Bobinski offered to let Jeff name his contract terms: pick the salary, pick the length, we’ll make it work. But Louisville was selling something Purdue could never match.
“This is home for me,” Brohm said at his introduction, and the proof of that was everywhere. The Angel’s Envy club lounge at L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium was packed with generations of Louisvillians who laid claim to knowing and/or cheering for Jeff at the NFL, college, high school and even elementary-school level.
Jeff’s dad, Oscar, a star quarterback at now closed Flaget High School who was billed as “the next Unitas” when he signed and played for the Cardinals, was present with his wife, Donna. Older brother Greg, who played receiver for the Cardinals with Jeff, was in attendance. Younger sister Kim, a three-sport athlete at Spalding University in Louisville, was there. Younger brother Brian Brohm, who also played QB for the Cards, was still back at Purdue but joined the Louisville staff soon enough.
And right there among the masses was Hilton Garden Inn stalker Brady Brohm with his mom, Jennifer, and younger sister, Brooke, who had her own role in this family drama. All of them were beaming as a familial dream came true in real time.
Nine months later, Jeff Brohm is sitting in a meeting room with his right foot propped up on a table. This is Monday, and his first Louisville team plays Georgia Tech on Friday. The coach looks relaxed, but there is a hint at the opening-week nerves percolating within.
In his left hand, the 52-year-old Brohm is reflexively clicking one of those old-school, four-color pens that were all the rage when he was a kid. He’s got a bucket of them in his office that he uses, switching colors to help organize the notes he diligently jots down from film and practices. “Kind of grade-schoolish,” he says. “But it works for me.”
Red, click. Black, click. Blue, click. Green, click. Brohm is talking and clicking at the same time. You get the feeling his mind is elsewhere, likely deep in the call sheet for Georgia Tech. He very much wants to get this opener right.
“It’s not just a job,” Oscar Brohm says. “It’s personal.”
Jeff Brohm’s personal journey from a hero’s welcome in December to kickoff in September was a blur, with several key milestones along the way. checked in with Brohm regularly throughout the breakneck process of putting his first Louisville team together.
