Louisville takes Papa John's off name of Cardinal Stadium

Louisville’s Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium is now simply Cardinal Stadium.

The school announced Friday that it would be taking John Schnatter’s name off the stadium following the revelation that he used a racial slur on a conference call in May. Schnatter, a major Louisville booster, had resigned from the school’s board of trustees earlier in the week and resigned from his role as Papa John’s chairman of the board on Wednesday night.

Players began speaking out against stadium’s name Thursday

While the stadium bore the name of the pizza company, the naming rights deal was with Schnatter himself instead of the company. That made things slightly trickier for Louisville, though it wasted no time in doing what needed to be done.

Thursday, two Louisville players spoke out against the name of the stadium. Schnatter used the N-word on a company conference call this spring during a training exercise discussing racial issues.

Papa John’s has removed Schnatter from all branding

Now that he’s not the chairman of the board of the company he founded, Schnatter’s face is disappearing from all of Papa John’s marketing materials. The company’s stock went up on Thursday — the first day of trading after Schnatter’s resignation — following a Wednesday decline.

The pizza kingpin is no stranger to controversy, especially recently. He resigned as the company’s CEO in December after he said the NFL’s response to protests during the national anthem had hurt the company’s stock price. Papa John’s was at that time the official pizza of the NFL and that partnership dissolved in February.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter

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