Gameday

It's finally here...college football! After all that anticipation through the doldrums of August, South Carolina and Southern Miss play tonight! I'm pumped as I always am for the first night of football. It seems like South Carolina has cornered the market for starting the season off on Thursday night...which they stole from us since we did it for the first two years - '06 & '07.....oh well, they are actually winning the game.

Thursday Night Football is great...and I really like starting the season on Thursday night. Not only do I not have to wait until Saturday, but it stretches the opening weekend to last for 5 days! You've even got games on Friday, Sunday, and Monday...it's like a huge opening party. But I just like Thursday night football period, all through the year. It's great to watch a top match-up during the week, like a great tasting appetizer that really just gets you hungrier for the main course. I'm indifferent about the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday night games. Usually the Tuesday and Wednesday games are irrelevant and even though the Friday games are pretty good I hate to see anything taken away from high school football.

This year has actually got a lot of games starting on Thursday night, I assume to get 2 extra days of rest before week 2...which gives my argument for playing a 1-AA team a couple weeks before the season even more validity. There is a handful of BCS schools playing tonight but no one should really have any problems other than Pittsburgh. Pitt is playing at Utah in what should be a really good game on Versus. I am picking Pitt to win, but it is with great caution I'm making this pick...they are an extremely young team but they are very talented. It would not surprise me at all for Utah to win...but they lost 6 players to the NFL draft and that will hurt. And I think it would be incredible if USC would lose at Hawaii deep into the night. It probably won't happen, but it would be great.

As for the marquee game, South Carolina vs. Southern Miss, I'm going with South Carolina. I'm expecting big things from the Gamecocks even though they have one of the toughest schedules in the nation, so they need to start off the year right tonight. Southern Miss has a proven QB but they only have one returning starter on their offensive line and serious question marks there. On the road, I don't think the Golden Eagles can get enough offense going against another great South Carolina defense. 27-14 Gamecocks.

JB