Sources: Louisville finalizing deal to hire Appalachian State's Scott Satterfield as next football coach

Louisville is finalizing a deal to hire Appalachian State’s Scott Satterfield as its new football coach, multiple sources told Yahoo Sports.

As soon as Purdue coach Jeff Brohm turned down an offer from the Cardinals last Wednesday, Satterfield became the leading candidate for the job. Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra met with Satterfield sometime after the Mountaineers won the Sun Belt Conference championship game Saturday, beating Louisiana-Lafayette to go 10-2 and lock up a bid to face Middle Tennessee State in the New Orleans Bowl. Satterfield is not expected to coach the bowl game.

Louisville has called an athletic association board meeting for Tuesday, presumably to approve the hiring of Satterfield.

The 45-year-old Satterfield, a former quarterback at App State, does not have a high-profile name but brings strong credentials to the job. He has a 51-24 record in six seasons at his alma mater and is 40-11 over the past four, having guided the program through its move up from FCS to FBS. This is the third straight year his team has won or shared the Sun Belt title, and he was named the league’s Coach of the Year this season. He was considered a viable candidate for the North Carolina job until the school reached back into its past and hired Mack Brown.

For Louisville fans accustomed to productive offenses under Petrino, Satterfield brings an impressive offensive background. Appalachian State led the Sun Belt in scoring this year and finished No. 20 nationally at 36.7 points per game.

Satterfield also earned a reputation for fearless scheduling and came close to pulling several major upsets, losing at Penn State in overtime this year, by a point to Wake Forest last year and in OT at Tennessee in 2016. App State opened three of the past four seasons at Georgia, Tennessee and Michigan. Satterfield should feel right at home at Louisville, which opens the 2019 season by hosting Notre Dame on Labor Day night.

Louisville’s program crash-landed this season after Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Lamar Jackson left for the NFL. The Cardinals were 2-10 and lost their final nine games, surrendering 50 or more points seven times, including the last five games of the season. That free-fall to the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference led to the dismissal of Bobby Petrino, with the school eating a $14 million buyout to part ways with the previously successful coach.

There were lingering discipline issues within the Louisville program that interim coach Lorenzo Ward tried to correct, suspending multiple players for the final two games of the season. Satterfield will have to deal with that while establishing a new culture.

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