College Football News Makes USC Prediction

posted by Scott Hood, Wednesday, August 08, 2007

CollegeFootballNews.com, one of the more thorough and popular web sites covering college football, has predicted that South Carolina will finish 8-4 in 2007. According to writer Pete Fiutak, USC will sweep all seven home games plus the road game at Chapel Hill. Since he forecasts the Gamecocks will lose all four road SEC games, that means USC will finish 4-4 in the SEC.

Here's the breakdown of the schedule, according to CollegeFootballNews.com:

Louisiana-Lafayette. . . .W
at Georgia. . . . . . . . L
S.C. State. . . . . . . . W
at LSU. . . . . . . . . . L
Miss. State. . . . . . . .W
Kentucky. . . . . . . . . W
at North Carolina. . . . .W
Vanderbilt. . . . . . . . W
at Tennessee. . . . . . . L
at Arkansas. . . . . . . .L
Florida. . . . . . . . . .W
Clemson. . . . . . . . . .W

The CFN site predicts USC will face Florida State in the Music City Bowl on Dec. 31 in Nashville, TN.

They also list the Top 10 USC players:

1. Jasper Brinkley
2. Cory Boyd
3. Blake Mitchell
4. Mike Davis
5. Ryan Succop
6. Kenny McKinley
7. Eric Norwood
8. Casper Brinkley
9. Emanuel Cook
10. Jamon Meredith

The CFN site said USC should "forget about winning the SEC East given the brutal SEC road slate."

Not surprisingly, the key game on the schedule is the Sept. 8 battle against Georgia in Athens. "USC has to pull off the win between the hedges to likely avoid an 0-2 start and show that the program has made the turnaround under Spurrier."

It also projects QB Blake Mitchell will make a run for All-SEC honors. In fact, the site says Mitchell "could be the most effective passer in the East." The running game of Cory Boyd and Mike Davis will be "quietly effective."

Defensively, the CFN site described MLB Jasper Brinkley as "one of the best in America." It didn't stray far from the truth when it said "the defensive line has to be far better against the run." SS Emanuel Cook was described as "an emerging superstar."

Overall, the CFN preview of USC was fairly optimistic. The difficulty of the SEC road schedule appears to be USC's biggest enemy in 2007 in the eyes of CFN.

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