It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Has there ever been a time in Louisville athletics defined by utter excitement and promise, but equally by anxiety and uncertainty?

Charlie Strong has been embraced with open arms, he's bringing in recruits with talent unseen since the days of Brian Brohm, Michael Bush, and Elvis Dumervil. Tom Jurich is bursting with pride showing off the new addition and improvements made to the Papa. Ticket sales are way up.

But after working for so long to move into a BCS conference, its future is now very much in doubt. Should the worst occur, men like Mike Trangehese and Tom Jurich, not known for passivity, readily acknowledge that they are at a loss as to a course of action. If the conference is ransacked, how long before the next domino falls, when will the BCS bowl affiliation be pulled? And how long do you think Charlie Strong will continue to coach for a non-BCS school?

In the roundball universe, things are in a similar state of flux. Despite the occassional nut writing into the CJ, there are few Louisvillians not bursting with anticipation for the new downtown arena. Maybe it's just the Derby Time optimism at work, but the arena has spurred a new wave of civic pride, one that's been transposed onto downtown as a whole and its continued revitalization. We've locked up Pitino with a contract extension, and if we get good news at 1:30 on Thursday, we'll be in a position to hang banners in 2011.

But there are nagging doubts. The pending Sypher-trial will put Louisville basketball back into the headlines for the wrong reasons, the lines of communications have broken between the big man of the present, Samardo, and the big man of the future, Michael Chandler. And if the news is bad at 1:30 on Thursday, no amount of sugarcoating will be able to hide the fact that the balance of power in the state has swung to the dark side.

But it sure isn't boring. In the words of historian John Hope, "One feels the excitement of hearing an untold story."