Friday’s Random Thoughts

TGIF! 133 Days to the season opening kickoff, and I wanted to share some thoughts about what www.gamecockillustrated.com will be doing over the next several days/weeks.

First of all, we will be continuing to preview the 2009 football season by position. We still have receivers, tight ends, linebackers, and defensive backs. There are special teams too, and that was one of the eight questions facing the Gamecocks that we wrote about earlier. What will be the true strength of the Gamecock football team this coming season? The O-Line has plenty of game experience, and with a quarterback with a feel for the program now, our offense should be able to put up some points. Watching the team this spring, the defense looked great. I’m anxious to see how both sides look against competition with different colored jerseys.

We want to continue doing some player interviews and profiles, and will have more to post soon. JSU has some quality student/athletes on this team, and I’m looking forward to hearing more from them. Are there any players in particular you would like to see profiled?

Another thing we want to do is check on how the other OVC teams have done this spring, and how they are shaping up for next year. I think we’ll categorize those posts as “Know Your Enemy”. Who will be our toughest conference game in 2009?

I’ve always looked at the leadership the seniors provide to the team as a barometer of how the team plays – and how the team plays is an indication of the senior leadership. I like what I see of next season’s seniors.

JSUfan has great pictures of JSU sporting events. Please go take a look. Thanks for doing that, James.

With the NFL draft this weekend, and at the risk of missing someone, I wanted to recognize past JSU players who have been on NFL rosters – Jesse Baker, Ralph Battle, Dieter Brock, Walter Broughton, Kory Chapman, Eric Davis, David Gulledge, Darrell Malone, Keith McKeller, Terry Owens, Mark Ward, and Alvin Wright. For those of you who remember, the USFL had a few too. Does anyone know of a list compiled of all USFL players? All I could find was a scattering of information, and time limited me here in what I could do. I did see that JSU Punter Gregg Lowery was selected by Birmingham with the pick right after QB Jim Kelly (Buffalo Bills) was taken by Chicago.

The baseball, softball, and men’s tennis teams really deserve some attention. The softball team won again yesterday vs. Ole Miss with a walk-off home run by Hillary Downs. All of these teams are having fantastic seasons.

Since we’ve been doing this blog, if you’ve found anything interesting about it at all, please do us a favor – go to the bottom of this post and click on the “share” button. Please share this blog by email, facebook, or any of the other means listed with alumni, friends, students, parents, etc. Does anyone out there have any ideas regarding how to promote this blog?

There are several questions in today’s blog. Please feel free to comment by clicking on “post your comments” below. We’d like your input. More coming soon! Thanks!

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