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1. Will Tommy Beecher be successful as the starting quarterback?
At this point not only am I driving the Tommy Beecher Bandwagon, the title is in my name and I've already gotten a sorority girl to have his initials monogrammed on the back window. I don't think Beecher is going to bring the Heisman back to Columbia, but I think he will be solid enough to win some games. He might throw an interception or two, but you won't catch him keying cars, punching bouncers or peeing in public. That already puts him a step ahead of most of Carolina's recent quarterbacks.
2. Will N.C. State quarterback Russell Wilson last the entire game?
N.C. State's quarterback race finally ended when Tom O'Brien named redshirt freshman quarterback Russell Wilson the starter. Wilson has never played a down and is only 5-foot-11 and 191 lbs. He doesn't even need a hotel room on road games; O'Brien just throws him in his pocket and keeps him alive on Reese's Pieces and Nerds.
Jasper Brinkley looks at him like Oprah looks at a plate of cheese fries. This is about to get ugly.
3. How will Ellis Johnson's defense be different from last year's?
I'll admit it; I'm pretty jacked up about Ellis Johnson. Mainly because he wears giant, floppy sombrero-esque hats to practice that absolutely kill me. The man insists on having 12 square feet of shade around him at all times. He is like a walking bottle of SPF 50.
But it isn't just the hat - apparently the guy can coach. Look for his defense to be a lot more consistent than Tyrone Nix's.
4. What is with the Gamecock Walk?
Steve Spurrier declared this week that the players would walk through the stadium parking lot around 5:45 before the game, and so the "Gamecock Walk" was reborn. Doesn't anybody do anything original anymore? At Georgia it's the Dawg Walk. At Tennessee it's the Vol Walk. At Ole Miss it's the Walk of Champions (high comedy). Apparently Virginia Tech has a lot of simple people, because there it is just The Walk.
I say we start walking these guys through the parking lot after the game. If they play well, it's an amazing new tradition that kicks off the post-game party. If they don't play well, they might get hit in the head with a stray battery or clubbed in the kneecap. We could have used a Gamecock Walk Home after the Vanderbilt game last year. Sure I'd be serving five to 10 for assault, but somebody would have learned a lesson.
5. Could there possibly be a worse way to handle student tickets?
The university wanted to make the ticket process faster and fairer. They decided to give out tickets randomly online, meaning the people dedicated enough to do whatever it takes to get a ticket have the same random chance as people who can't even tell you the name of the stadium it will be played in.
If waiting in line was so much of a problem, why didn't they just hire more than four senior citizens to handle the ticketing process? God bless those old ladies, but it takes them a half an hour and two pairs of glasses to sign their Social Security checks, let alone give out tickets to thousands of anxious students.
If they had to change it, why not just have a giant rock, paper, scissors tournament? I'd rather go down in a thumb war for tickets than lose an Internet lottery.
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