Longtime UofL cheer coach says contract not renewed 'due to budgets'
James Speed, a longtime UofL cheerleading coach who led the program to 47 national titles, said his contract was not renewed as of early May.
For more than four decades, James Speed has been a champ at cheering on the University of Louisville from the sidelines. As of early May, though, Speed’s longtime run with UofL cheerleading has come to an end. The 64-year-old Louisville native first joined UofL’s cheer program as a student in 1980.
After spending a few years coaching at the University of Kansas, he returned to coach at his former college in 1990. For the next 36 years, Speed played the long game as a beloved coach who won big. Under his leadership, the program earned 47 national titles.
When Speed announced on Facebook on May 14 that his “time has sadly come to an end,” several hundred comments rolled in calling Speed a “living legend,” an “icon” or “the GOAT. ” His Facebook statement made one thing clear: “I would never willingly walk away from this program, or the athletes who I’ve built and poured everything into for the last 4 decades," Speed wrote. "However, due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been forced to close the door on my coaching career at the University of Louisville.
” In a May 7 meeting, Speed said he was informed that his contract would not be renewed "due to budgets and cuts," he told The Courier Journal on May 16. “I feel that they probably had a lot of budgetary pressures and they couldn't afford to probably fund it the way it needed to be funded, so the answer was just to move in another direction,” Speed told The Courier Journal. “You have to set priorities and, right now, unfortunately, my job and the large coed team is not one of those priorities.