The story behind Louisville football's media guide cover with Justify

Jake Lourim | Courier Journal

On a Thursday morning in early June, one day before Louisville's deadline to finish its football media guide, coach Bobby Petrino made a phone call to the team's spokesman, Rocco Gasparro. The coach had an idea for a new cover.

Until that morning, the plan was for the inside front cover to feature wide receivers Jaylen Smith, Dez Fitzpatrick and Seth Dawkins, three of the best in the conference, with the tag line "Speed City."

Petrino had a fresh idea, one that generated some buzz Tuesday. He thought the school could add Triple Crown winner Justify, and put that image on the front cover.

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Petrino brought Gasparro into his office and unveiled what he envisioned. Grant Apgar, the graphic designer for the football program, purchased a stock image of Justify on Adobe Stock and placed it with Smith, Fitzpatrick and Dawkins. The school finished the cover by the following Monday, making some subtle tweaks such as changing the orientation to fit a vertical cover layout.

Gasparro sent the cover to Louisville's marketing team, which added the subtext at the bottom of the cover as an explanation: "Fast thoroughbreds aren't the only ones who accelerate to win here. Louisville Cardinals have been taking flight at a breakneck pace for over a century. Welcome to Speed City."

Gasparro also said the Cardinals kicked around some other ideas, some novel like the horse, some not. Before that Thursday, the front cover was going to be what ended up being the back cover, a nondescript uniformed person holding a football with a dark visor obscuring his face, "not to single anybody out."

At the last minute, Louisville decided to put a unique twist on what's usually a fairly regular exercise.

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