Commentary
By Paul Fultz
I was surprised and saddened to learn of the death of Browning Nagle, the quarterback who led the University of Louisville football team to perhaps its greatest victory ever, a 34-7 thrashing of Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl. Nagle passed away in Louisville on April 10, 2026, at the age of 57, from colon cancer.
The Cardinals came in to the Fiesta Bowl as nine point underdogs, and few outside of Louisville expected them to emerge victorious. It was a classic David vs. Goliath scenario: Alabama is one of the most powerful football programs in NCAA history. By 1991 they had won 11 national championships and would go on to win their 12th in 1992.
The UofL football program, by contrast, struggled for many years: they had nine consecutive losing seasons from 1979-1987. Even though Howard Schnellenberger brought renewed optimism when he became coach in 1985, his first three teams still went 8-24-1. And they continued to be overshadowed by the basketball team, which went to four Final Fours and won two championships from 1980-1986.
But Schnellenberger turned it around by going 24-9-1 in his next three years, and Nagle was a huge part of that success. As the starting quarterback in 1989 and 1990, he passed for 4,653 yards and 32 touchdowns, leading the team to a 10-1-1 record as senior.
He shined even more brightly against Alabama, throwing for a Fiesta Bowl record 451 yards and three touchdowns, completing 20 of 33 passes and being named offensive MVP. The Crimson Tide never knew what hit them. The Cards finished the season ranked 14th, their first appearance in the national rankings.
To me, this is the greatest victory in the history of UofL football. Their 2006 win over Wake Forest in the Orange Bowl certainly rates consideration, as does their 2012 victory over Florida in the Sugar Bowl. But in 1991, the team’s last appearance in a New Year’s Day bowl game was a 1958 win in the Sun Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl thrust UofL into the national spotlight in a way none of those other games did.
Before becoming a starter in his last two seasons at UofL, Nagle had a winding road to success. An all-state quarterback at Pinellas Park High School in Tampa, Florida, he initially signed with powerhouse West Virginia. After losing out to future All-American Major Harris for the starting job, he transferred to UofL and had to sit out a year. In his second year at UofL he played sparingly while backing up starting quarterback Jay Gruden.
I first encountered Browning Nagle in 1989, when I was a UofL student and wrote for The Louisville Cardinal, UofL’s independent student newspaper. Nagle led UofL to victories in the first two games of the 1989 season, and I interviewed him about the great start he and the team had gotten off to. He was charming, pleasant, and humble and spoke candidly about his struggles before the season.
“I sat out for three years, and it got discouraging occasionally,” Nagle said in an interview published in the Sept. 21, 1989 issue of The Louisville Cardinal.
“But you can learn a lot from not playing. I watched (former UofL quarterback) Jay Gruden and learned from the things he did.”
“I don’t know that I’ve done an exceptional job,” he said. “I think the entire offensive unit has exceeded everyone’s expectations. I certainly didn’t expect to throw for four touchdowns in my first start.”
That was the first of many interviews with him, and I always found him to be very down to earth, fun loving and quick with a laugh. I never knew him personally, but we were both Communication majors and had several classes together. On a couple of occasions we found ourselves in the back of a class wishing we were somewhere else, and we commiserated and cracked a few jokes about it.
In the fall of 1990, one of Nagle’s instructors dropped him from her class. He appealed, but if his appeal were unsuccessful he would have been ineligible to continue playing football. Which would have destroyed both UofL’s season and his pro football dreams.
The instructor said she dropped him because he rarely attended her class, utilizing an infrequently used UofL class attendance policy to do so. I thought her actions were uncalled for and unfair. Students routinely missed multiple classes and were still able to pass them by studying, doing homework, and showing up for tests. If it hadn’t been for this method many students never would have graduated, myself included.
But even though my sympathies were with Nagle, the fact that he might be ineligible for the rest of the season was a big story. And as a reporter I had a job to do regardless of my personal opinion. So I tried interviewing the instructor, but she said privacy concerns prevented her from discussing it unless the student spoke publicly about it first.
I knew the UofL football team was about to leave for a road game, so I frantically scoured campus in a desperate attempt to find them. Everywhere I went the answer was the same: you just missed them. I gave up and went back to the paper’s offices, where I ran into a writer I didn’t know well named Greg Schultz.
He’d only worked there for a few issues and would only be there for a few more, but that day he performed an invaluable service. He said my uncle works at the airport, he can get us past security and on the runway. So off to the airport we went.
When we arrived his uncle was nowhere to be found, but he rounded up some hats with union logos and a couple of clipboards. We put the hats on and he said follow me, carry this clipboard, and look down at it like you’re pissed off and in a hurry. To my surprise it worked, no one glanced at us twice and we soon found ourselves on the runway.
We spotted the small plane the football team was boarding, and I got in line and tried to walk on. But the assistant coaches standing in the plane’s entrance were having none of it and refused to let me board. Once again I was ready to give up, but I was shocked by my co-worker’s words: “You know, there’s a maintenance hatch on the bottom of this plane, and I’m pretty sure I can open it.”
With visions of prison dancing in my head, I walked under the plane with him, where he swiftly located and opened the maintenance hatch, pulling some retractable stairs down. I went up the stairs with every expectation that I would never find Nagle before I was thrown off the plane, perhaps literally.
As fate would have it, as soon as I got to the top of the stairs there he was, siting in a seat about five feet from me. I went over and started asking him questions about being in danger of losing his eligibility.
This is what a nice guy and what a cool customer Browning Nagle was: he could have gotten angry, or simply refused to speak to me. I had just materialized out of nowhere from the bottom of an airplane, after all. But he calmly answered my questions, then watched without comment as I went back down the stairs and closed the hatch behind me.
With my interview secured, the instructor agreed to speak to me and I had the story. The Louisville Cardinal was the first to break the news, and when the paper was published Nagle was the very first person to get a copy.
I know this because students who worked for the paper sometimes also picked up a little extra money by delivering it around campus when it was published on Thursdays. So that year I was Sports Editor and also Circulation Manager, a fancy name for “guy who delivers the paper.”
The best part of delivering the paper was you got to drive a big white UofL van all over campus, including on the sidewalks. The first stop was the Humanities Building, and standing by the door was Browning Nagle. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him there, but I was.
If he was surprised to see me get out of the van with a giant bundle of papers he didn’t show it. He just stood there calmly like James Bond waiting for a dry martini until I walked over and handed him a copy, then he nodded politely and started reading it while slowly walking off into the distance.
The story was quickly picked up by local and national media. But a few days later it was all over: Nagle won his appeal and kept his eligibility to finish the season.
UofL fans everywhere breathed a sigh of a relief, and so did I. I also didn’t die of the giant hole Schnellenberger tried to stare into me the next time he saw me at a press conference. A year later UofL changed their rule: instructors were no longer allowed to drop students strictly for lack of attendance.
Flash forward to the Fiesta Bowl: I normally didn’t travel to away games, but this one was such a big deal the paper paid to send me and photographer Harry Sanders to Arizona to cover it. We had to arrive at the airport at 5 AM on New Year’s Day, and since we weren’t used to getting up before Noon we decided the best thing we could do was attend several parties and not go to bed at all. We were packed on a small plane with dozens of other boisterous fans, then whisked to and from the game by bus.
But it was all worth it to witness UofL’s resounding victory and Nagle’s history making performance. I interviewed him in the locker room, congratulating him and wishing him well in his pro career. He was, of course, every bit as gracious and humble as the day I met him.
Nagle was taken 34th overall by the New York Jets in the 1991 NFL Draft and played five seasons in the NFL, three with the Jets and one each for the Indianapolis Colts and the Atlanta Falcons. He also played two seasons in the Arena Football League.
Browning Nagle will be remembered not only for his amazing athletic accomplishments, but for being a genuinely nice guy who was well-liked by everyone he ever met. I can certainly attest to that, as can everyone who ever had the privilege of watching him play or being around him. May he rest in peace.
For more on Browning Nagle’s life and his playing days, go to:
https://lcag.site/2026/04/28/browning-nagle
To view the Photo Gallery “Flashback to 1991: The Fiesta Bowl & Browning Nagle at UofL” go to:
https://lcag.site/2026/04/28/photo-gallery-browning-nagle
Photo: All The Right Moves – Louisville quarterback Browning Nagle (7) works out at Cardinal Stadium Sept. 12, 1989 as part of preparations for the Cards’ Sept. 23, 1989 home opener with West Virginia. Nagle has thrown for four touchdowns and 438 yards in Cardinal victories over Wyoming and Kansas. Photo by John Simpson. This photo originally ran in the Sept. 14, 1989 issue of The Louisville Cardinal.
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