Report: Louisville increasingly confident it will keep Charlie Strong

The rumors about Charlie Strong and his future as Louisville's head football coach have only grown since his Monday press conference where he hoped to avoid them, but instead fed them. With various reports from ESPN's Chris Low and others indicating that Strong would be offered the Tennessee job and many expecting that should he be offered that the job he would take it, that no longer seems to the case.

According to a report from Yahoo! Sports' Pat Forde, officials in the Louisville athletic department are increasingly optimistic that they'll be able to fend of Tennessee and retain Charlie Strong. Forde writes:

On a day when media reports identified Charlie Strong as the leading candidate for the vacant Tennessee job, there was a quiet confidence here that the third-year head coach will remain with the Cardinals.

Charlie Strong guided Louisville to a 10-2 record and a berth in the Sugar Bowl. Multiple sources who spoke with Strong on campus Tuesday said he seemed committed to staying with the Cardinals – through the Sugar Bowl and beyond.

They expect him to coach Louisville in 2013. "Unless he's the greatest poker player of all time, I don't think he’s going anywhere," one Louisville source told Yahoo! Sports.

It's worth reminding readers that reporting in coaches searches is difficult. Just today, two reporters from the same paper in Arkansas reported precisely the opposite thing within 15 minutes of one another about the Arkansas job and whether or not Mike Gundy would be the next coach there. Still, it appears that what might have seemed like a lost cause this morning is no longer so. If Forde's report is accurate, Charlie Strong is much more likely to be Louisville's coach going forward than anyone might have predicted even as late as Tuesday afternoon.