Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 set staggering sales records, pulling in more than $400 million in the first day of its release. It stands to reason that at least a few of those buyers were college football players.
That's concerning for Louisville coach Charlie Strong, who noticed a troubling lack of focus by the Cardinals in their 21-14 loss to Pittsburgh.
"Our guys talk about it," Strong said in a video posted by The Courier-Journal. "You hear it all the time. What is it, 'Call to Duty,' the new video game? It was a call to duty and they got called to duty Saturday."
The title is actually Call of Duty, in which gamers pretend they're soldiers and travel the globe battling insurgents — without any of the sacrifice and trauma subjected to actual members of the military, of course.
"This video game is that important?" Strong said. "We'll see how important it is on Saturday. … In about a week or so, you're going to be throwing that video game away, but we let a video game take control of us."
Louisville travels to Connecticut on Saturday in a battle of two teams involved in a five-way tie for second place in the Big East. With the Big East in disarray, beating Call of Duty might qualify as a greater accomplishment than winning the conference this year.
Just saying.
Screen shot via courier-journal.com