For as long as the University of Louisville can remember, it sat in coach. It ate peanuts, wedged into no-leg-room seating between fat slobs. It boarded after the important people, battled for overhead space and paid for its drinks.

And it wondered what went on behind the curtain, in first-class FantasyLand.

Today, the University of Louisville is on the brink of an upgrade for the ages. It has lobbied, spent and performed its way onto the upgrade waiting list, pending what Miami and its Big East brethren -- most specifically Syracuse and Boston College and/or Virginia Tech -- choose to do. Now, with the chance finally at hand and blood in the BCS water, the Cardinals are ready to bust through the curtain and see what life is like on the other side.

These are titillating times for the Louisvilles, Marshalls, Cincinnatis, Brigham Youngs and Fresno States of the world. The Atlantic Coast Conference's bid to expand and thereby shift the tectonic plates of college sports has opened the way for new opportunities -- opportunities that have been closed to schools a cut below the BCS leagues in recent years. More money, more exposure and more prestige are on the table, with hands grabbing from all directions.

If you're Marshall, you finally want to get on the same footing as West Virginia. If you're Louisville, it's Kentucky. If you're Cincinnati, it's Ohio State. If you're Memphis, it's Tennessee. You want the shot to show you're the equal of your in-state rival from the elite conference, if just given the chance to play on the same level. You want the cloth napkins, the warm hand towels and a place to hang your coat.

But to get there, everything must go through Miami. Everyone is watching Coral Gables, watching for a sign. The Hurricanes have nothing smaller than the future landscape of college athletics in their hands.

If you're Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich, who thinks big 'round the clock, you hold your breath and hope. He declined comment for this story, but let's try to read his mind:

The ideal scenario is for Miami to accept what everyone thinks will be the moon from Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, and to stay with that league. Then the Big East announces that it is restructuring, with non-football members Georgetown, St. John's, Seton Hall, Providence and Villanova going their own way -- and you slide into the new football-playing league as its ninth member.

And with Miami still in the fold, BCS status would come with the package.

But even if the 'Canes and two other Big East teams jump, if you're Louisville you probably look to bail on Conference USA anyway. You hope to join in with Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and the other Big East survivors in a league that might be BCS borderline, but at least lacks the baggage that is Houston, UAB, Tulane and the other C-USA anchors.

So if you're Jurich, you speak softly in public and work the phones in private. You stay loyal to your league, but keep your eyes and ears open.

You don't want to alienate your current conference company, because an upgrade is no sure thing at this point and because the league has been decent to you for the past seven years. But everything you've been doing for years is building to this moment, when you jump at inclusion into The Club.

You've pumped up your budget to Serious Player Status, now spending more on athletics than any other non-BCS program. You've boosted non-revenue sports with a host of new facilities. You're getting out the word about increases in athletic grade-point averages, trying to expunge an old stigma about U of L being an academic wasteland, and you've taken care of an NCAA compliance problem in the waning years with Denny Crum.

You think you've got a lot to offer. You have a basketball program that ranks among the top three in America in attendance, has a future Hall of Fame coach in Rick Pitino and as much tradition as anyone else in the Big East. You have a football program that has been to five straight bowl games, has established a reputation for breeding great quarterbacks, plays in one of the nation's nicest and newest stadiums -- and actually puts fans in those sparkly seats, unlike most of the rest of your C-USA brethren.

You made an address last month to the BCS honchos, explaining how life in coach class stinks.

You've listened to Billy Packer refer to C-USA as a "mid-major" conference, knowing that your basketball team was ranked No. 2 at one point this past season and that Marquette was on its way to the Final Four. You know the stigma.

You told the BCS folks how it's basically easier to hit the Powerball than convince a big-time program to come play at your place. Louisville got Florida State to play in Derby City last year, won the game, and now prospective future opponents are sprinting the other direction. Baylor and Texas Tech want out of contracts, and nobody else is in a hurry to sign up to play the Cardinals.

You can't even get Indiana, 100 miles to your north and owning inferior gridiron clout, to play you home-and-home. Aside from Kentucky, Florida State is the only BCS school to come to Louisville this century. Temple shows up in the fall, but the Owls are in the process of being forcibly removed from the Big East anyway -- so how much does that count?

Speaking of the Big East: Pittsburgh was once an opponent. Same with Virginia Tech. Same with Boston College.

Louisville played Pitt twice, in 1993 and '94, and won both. It split two with Virginia Tech in the early '90s. And it split four with BC during that decade, winning the last meeting 52-28 in 1998.

Illinois, Oklahoma, Penn State, Michigan State, North Carolina, Texas, Texas A&M, Arizona State and Tennessee visited in the 1990s -- but that was a different era. You were more willing to play 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 on home dates, and those schools hadn't yet fully turned their backs on non-BCS opponents.

Now, everyone in the big leagues wants seven home games, so they schedule Directional Tech for a guaranteed victory and ignore the dangerous schools from the "mid-major" leagues.

If you get in a league with those guys, they have to come to you. That's the beauty of life behind the curtain. That's the beauty of flying first class. And that's why the Louisville's of college sports sense the upgrade of a lifetime is at hand right now.

Pat Forde covers college football for the Louisville Courier-Journal.