Football Recruiting Visitors, SEC Power Index and Navy/USC Tidbits

It’s been 313 days (November 8th, versus Troy) since the sights & sounds of Williams-Brice were on display. Finally South Carolina will play its 2011 home opener. USC fans should be sky high with enthusiasm with a top ten football team debuting at the cockpit (My unofficial nickname!). The pageantry and tailgating will be a spectacle as fans have been gearing up for the home opener all offseason. With the home opener, Carolina will finally have the opportunity to host some unofficial visitors (football prospects) as football recruiting is a 24/7 cycle. In the recruiting world, anytime a university gets a high school or junior college prospect on its campus, the chances of ultimately signing the player rises. It’s commonplace for schools to host unofficial visitors. An “unofficial visit” is equivalent to a student prospect that pays out of his or her pocket for the entire trip while visiting a university. The institution is not allowed to provide any reimbursement to a prospect that is on an unofficial visit. Seldom do college coaches like official visits during a game because it diverts attention away from game preparation. Now coaches will make exceptions if high-profile players want to use an official visit on game day. The norm is to encourage a prospect of high value to make an official visit to a high-profile game, i.e., Auburn, Florida or Clemson for this calendar year. USC, as of right now, is not expecting any official visitors for the Navy game. Here is a preliminary list of unofficial visitors for Saturday night. The list is comprised of 2012 verbal commitments. There will be other prospects attending who are 2013 & 2014 prospects, but I will focus on the 2012 class:
Verbal Commitments (per www.thebigspur.com)
WR Shaq Roland - Lexington, SC (4-star)
RB Kendric Salley – Williston, SC (3-star)
WR Kwinton Smith – Dillon, SC (4-star)
OL Brock Stadnik – Greensboro, NC (4-star)
OL Clayton Stadnik – Greensboro, NC (2-star)
WR Jody Fuller – Monroe, NC (4-star)
OL Mason Zandi – Chapin, SC (2-star)
SEC Power Index – Week Three Edition
1. LSU – The Bayou Bengals had a breather last weekend versus instate whippin’ boy Northwestern State. LSU opens SEC play this Thursday night in Stark’vegas’.
2. Alabama – The Crimson Tide return back to Bryant-Denny Stadium this week after defeating Penn State last weekend to hand a six-figure check to North Texas for an a$$ whipping!
3. South Carolina – It might be too high for a team giving up 40+ points per game, up and down offense, and player shuffling galore in the Secondary, but USC has beaten UGA & ECU away from Williams-Brice.
4. Arkansas – Explosive offense, improving defense and the most talented WR corps in the country. Let’s see how Arkansas handles Troy this weekend versus sCUm.
5. Florida – So far the Charlie Weiss & Wil Muschamp marriage is working. This weekend the competition ratchets up severely versus UT. We’ll see if there are chinks in the Gators’ armor come Sunday evening.
6. Auburn – The horseshoe stuck in Gene Chizik’s derriere is enormous! Auburn has now won 17 straight games dating back to the 2010 Outback Bowl win over Northwestern. How many bottles of TUMS do the AU coaches go through weekly?
7. Mississippi State – The Bulldogs were once again snake-bitten versus Auburn. Bulldogs QB Chris Relf, 6’3”/250+ pounds, gets upended at the goal line Saturday afternoon in Auburn as time expires and loses by seven points. Now with a quick turnaround, MSU must face LSU on Thursday night without two starting OL against possibly the best DL in the country.
8. Tennessee – Is there a younger, more explosive QB/duo-WR tandem in the country than QB Tyler Bray throwing to the WR tandem of Justin Hunter & Da’ Rick Rogers? The Volunteers travel to Gainesville on Saturday for the first test of the season for Derek Dooley’s young bunch of Vols.
9. Georgia – The Dawgs were ready to play on Saturday afternoon versus USC. I thought UGA played very inspired football. Now, can Georgia continue taking positive steps forward and build a little momentum? The big game, IMHO, will be at home on October 1st versus Mississippi State.
10. Vanderbilt – The Commodores are 2-0 to start the season with wins over Elon & UConn. Saturday, Vandy opens SEC play versus Ole Miss in Nashville before traveling to Columbia next Saturday to play USC. Over the last decade, this annual series has achieved a level of parity. Vanderbilt has won 3 of the last 4 contests between the schools (per Wikipedia).
11. Ole Miss – Has Houston Nutt slipped down the pecking order of SEC coaches? Ole Miss lost a heartbreaker in Week One to BYU. This week, the Rebels travel to the Music City and face Vanderbilt. Ole Miss is 6-4 versus Vanderbilt since 2000.
12. Kentucky – Kentucky might be the biggest undefeated (2-0) fraud of this young season. The Wildcats barely squeak out a win versus WKU in week one and then win unimpressively versus Central Michigan last week. This Saturday, the ‘Cats host in-state rival Louisville in the Commonwealth classic. UK better secure victory number “3” because the cupcakes come off the schedule after Saturday. The next three opponents are Florida (home), at LSU and at USC back-to-back-to-back weekends.
Here are some tidbits surrounding the Navy/USC match-up Saturday night per ESPN:
→Navy is 9-9-2 all-time versus SEC competition
→Carolina is 4-3 versus Navy all-time
→Navy has not beaten a top-10 team since beating then #2 USC in 1984 (38-21)
→Navy is the #1 Rushing football team in the NCAA averaging just over 400 yards/game
→Navy has yet to surrender a Passing TD in 2011
→Navy has not started 3-0 since 2006
→Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman will attend the game because his son is a freshman on the Navy football team
→Steve Spurrier is 42-0 all-time versus non-BCS schools
→The two institutions have not met since 1988
→USC is 4-0 versus Navy at Williams-Brice Stadium
→Carolina will pay Navy $900k for this game

I will post my next blog Friday afternoon. I will break down the five keys to victory for Carolina in the Navy game.

Go Gamecocks!