This website’s founding editor had a heckuva year picking college football games in 2012. For example he missed the final score of last year’s South Carolina-Clemson game by just two points, and came within a touchdown on several other games (including South Carolina home wins over Missouri and UAB).
Spread? We don’t need no stinking spread …
In fact a few of our Twitter followers actually won some cash laying down bets based on Will Folks’ (a.k.a. Sic Willie’s) venerable prognostication.
This season we’re stepping up our game – not only issuing Sic’s weekly predictions but offering up a few reasons for choosing the outcomes we did. The first game on tap? Sixth-ranked South Carolina’s season opener tonight against the University of North Carolina.
As our headline attests, we’re calling for a decisive Gamecock win – a 22-point victory margin. That’s around 10 points higher than the latest Vegas line, which has head coach Steve Spurrier’s squad installed as a 12.5-point favorite.
Why do we think Spurrier’s team will handily beat that spread? Easy: The Gamecocks’ vaunted defensive line will simply overpower the Tar Heels front five – rendering new head coach Larry Fedora’s up-tempo, spread offense completely ineffective.
The Gamecock D-linemen are just that good … while the level of competition in the ACC is, well, that bad.
Assuming you’re into the parlay thing, we’re calling for at least two sacks from Heisman Trophy candidate Jadeveon Clowney – although his fellow defensive linemen Kelcy Quarles and Chaz Sutton could potentially have bigger games statistically due to the frequent double/triple-teams Clowney is likely to draw.
In fact here’s a recent post we wrote examining this critical matchup in more detail …
Offensively the Gamecocks boast two proven signal callers – Connor Shaw and Dylan Thompson – as well as tons of speed and depth at the skill positions. Speaking of … we fully expect running back Mike Davis and wide receiver Shaq Roland to have breakthrough seasons in 2013.
What’s really going to give Tar Heel defenders fits, though? USC’s depth at tight end. Preseason All-SEC performer Rory Anderson, a junior, and sophomores Jerrell Adams and Drew Owens comprise one of the best tight end corps in the nation – offering Spurrier’s offense all sorts of added flexibility.
What do you think the score of tonight’s game will be? Post your prediction in our comments section below …
18 comments
Sakerlina pulls away in the 4th quarter to win 31-20.
Tech support questions:
1) Why do you get purple hyperlinks?
2) Why does every new post say “Posted 4 hours ago”?
Is TBG on some kind of time delay?
3 ) How the hell is something that wasn’t news 5 years ago “Trending”?
Calm down TBG, after the Republican primary Nancy Mace will be back to fix this techno FUBAR.
1) Probably coded that way in the style sheet.
2) I’ve been wondering that myself. Is there a delay before the posts go live? Or does it just say 4 hours by default unless it is more?
3) Probably because one person from Google or doing a search on the site clicked it, therefore +1 hit = “trending.”
I ignore everything on the home page except the article photo. This is because the faint print contrast is almost unreadable . Also, the links in a post are very faint. The time on the photo is probably when it was approved internally. The best I can come up with on the flame icon to the right of the comments icon is that it is probably the count of the different individuals who open the article (if you open and close the article yourself 2-3 times quickly the number doesn’t change).
(if you open and close the article yourself 2-3 times quickly the number doesn’t change).
TGB has done the same thing. Either we are both highly intelligent and curious or… we’ve got WAAAAY too much time on our hands…
Trending probably means that he’s still getting Google hits even though the story is old.
The most annoying thing to me is the comments count. Until this last upgrade, the count was kept current, which is how I kept up with the new posts – by noting an increase in the number. Now, there may be 5 comments but the header shows 0, or vice versa.
Where do you get your spread cards from now that gambling in SC is illegal again…
I agree to disagree with you on this one.
Decisive wins influence National Championships. On the other hand we will not want to show Georgia too much of our game as they are about the only thing standing in the way of the conference title. Therefore, Spurrier will look for a comfortable lead early and then attempt to manage a respectable finish without flipping over too many cards.
Carolina 34 Heels 17 Clowney sits out half two quarters
Clowney sits out half two quarters
Prescient.
I’m going to call Gamecocks win 24-13. I think USC will be a bit sloppy in the first half. As long as they win, though, I’m all smiles.
TBG thinks you won.
Ass kicking of monumental proportions. It won’t be a 63-17 style beatdown (but what really is, amiright?), but the dicks will violate the demoralized shoes in the 2nd half.
40-17 dicks.
Well that wasn’t the ass kicking I thought it would be. Compared to a shitty ACC team, the all powerful SEC dicks didn’t look that great. And superman Clowney looked poorly conditioned for all the hype he generated.
We’ve had NFL quality tight ends for years, all of which we have underutilized. All. I don’t expect that to change, sadly.
I predict 27-10. I worry about bad weather. Hope there isn’t a delay