A brave new USA: Conference USA has been around almost a decade, but its components have shifted far too much for any kind of tradition to take root. Next year, the league will get its biggest makeover--for better or worse.

There is a blocking sled being driven across the grass by several large, grunting linemen. On an adjacent field, a phalanx of special teamers charges toward a punt returner. But the magical music of this early autumn practice is obscured by the screech of a nearby freight train, car horns on the neighboring interstate and the blast of a UPS cargo jet that has just left the airport. Surely, this is the sound of Big East football.

That's where Louisville wants to be--a city school in a city conference, and it'll be that soon, though never soon enough.

"The city can't wait," says Paul Rogers, Louisville's radio play-by-play announcer. But first the ...