If you are a lover of Lance, then look away, because his house of cards appears to be falling to the ground.

Perhaps that’s too harsh, calling the empire Lance Armstrong has built from his fame and success a house of cards. It’s certainly stronger than that. But if all it takes is one cleansing rain to wash that all away, then it might be coming down nonetheless.

The New York Times — which, along with the Wall Street Journal, has been covering the hell out of the USADA’s investigation of Armstrong — is reporting that at least one unnamed former teammate has corroborated some of Floyd Landis’ claims that Armstrong doped and encouraged others to do the same. This comes on the heels of further, similar revelations that have cast further the black cloud of suspicion over Armstrong’s seven-year reign as king of the Tour de France and, by extension, cycling itself.

The problem with Armstrong as a doper is that he doesn’t fit the mold we typically expect. It’s easy for us to dismiss men like Michael Rasmussen or Bernhard Kohl as cheaters — they are cyclists, and we assume that all cyclists cheat, whether they get caught or not.

But Armstrong is different. Armstrong inspired. He continues to inspire. The first person my mother thought of the afternoon her oncologist told her she had breast cancer, after her family, was Lance Armstrong. And thus, he was a symbol to so many people for that very same reason.

But inspiration can be tainted. Mark McGwire used performance-enhancing drugs. Ty Cobb was a known and public racist. These things taint their legacies, and instill in us at least enough doubt to dismiss the men and women who commit these crimes as frauds.

But will the same be true for Armstrong, if this all shakes out against him?

Perhaps never in the history of American professional sports has one athlete been so successful at marketing themselves and their message. Armstrong’s campaign against cancer has raised millions, started worldwide fashion trends and put him, quite literally, in front of presidents.

Lance Armstrong is the face of the fight against cancer, in any form. How would this diminish that?

Well, of course, it would. People are fickle. We are desperate for heroes, and expect too much. We only want to see machines, gladiators gathered for our entertainment, when we turn sports on.

The how doesn’t matter. We don’t want it to matter. We want to be inspired in the easiest way possible: from the comfort of our own living rooms. And it’s wildly inconvenient for us when these paper-doll heroes of ours fall apart before our eyes.

Maybe Armstrong won’t be charged. Perhaps it will all go away. It certainly has before. Maybe he never really did anything wrong. I can’t say I believe all that, but given his history and the doubts that have followed him for years, he deserves credibility for the fact that he’s never once been flagged for any sort of wrongdoing.

But if he is brought down, if the walls come crashing to the dirt around him, what will the implications be?

Certainly, American cycling will take a hit. Other riders of his generation, some of whom have already been implicated by Landis, could face similar scandal. Team Radio Shack would likely fold, considering how much it relies on Armstrong and Livestrong. American cycling, poised to replace its outgoing generation with a strong youth movement, would also take a body blow.

But where would it leave Lance, the cancer fighter? The one that raises all that money. The one that, for better or for worse, uses his fame for an incredibly important cause, and actually affects change that makes people’s lives better,

I don’t really know, and that’s what worries me.