East: Earlier, the better for South Carolina

Last year, then-first year Carolina coach Steve Spurrier opened against Central Florida, as the Gamecocks struggled for a 24-15 victory.

"It was certainly worth the tradeoff to be opening college football Thursday night on national TV," he said. "Hopefully, that has helped our recruiting a little bit."

Spurrier doesn’t mind Thursday night games, and he believes ESPN has agreed to televise a Thursday night Carolina-North Carolina State game to open the ’08 season. Carolina likes not playing on Saturday. The Gamecocks are 12-0 when opening the season on a day other than Saturday, outscoring the opposition 270-27.

Wynn For Florida: Florida fifth-year senior tailback DeShawn Wynn is hoping to play to his potential after flying under the radar for most of his career.

The former Parade All-American has 1,378 career rushing yards. He led the Gators with 621 yards last season, but Florida coach Urban Meyer was so peeved about Wynn and the rest of the backs this past spring that he called them trash and threatened to play without a tailback. That finally motivated Wynn, who was beaten out for the starter’s job by Ciatrick Fason in 2004 and sulked.

"I regret that I didn’t have a coach (throughout his career) like coach Meyer, who pushed me, got me to understand what needs to be done," Wynn said. "(Previous Florida) Coach (Ron) Zook was a good coach, but I never really got pushed by him. I think if I had coach Meyer the whole time, I would have been all right."

Honoring Doster: Vanderbilt is doing a great thing honoring late tailback Kwane Doster, who was shot and killed after the ’04 season. Commodore players have elected junior linebacker Jonathan Goff to wear a game jersey with a logo consisting of a ‘1’ (which was Doster’s jersey number) with a star around it, and the initials ‘K’ and ‘D’ on either side.

"I know what it represents," Goff said. "Kwane was one amazing person."

Georgia QB Update: It was thought that true freshman Matthew Stafford would push hard for the starting quarterback spot at Georgia. As it turns out, at least for Saturday’s season opener against Western Kentucky, he’s not even one of the top two QBs.

Fifth-year senior Joe Tereshinski III won the job over Stafford, redshirt freshman Joe Cox and redshirt sophomore Blake Barnes. Tereshinski is the only of the four QBs with any game experience.

Stafford, of Dallas, was considered the No. 1 quarterback in the nation by Rivals.com when he signed with the Bulldogs last year and enrolled in January. But Cox, from Charlotte, N.C., won the backup job.

Georgia coach Mark Richt said the QB competition may continue through the season.