The Daily Feed: 2013 season opener between Gamecocks and Tar Heels moved to Thursday night

Football season opener against North Carolina moved to Thursday night
Even though Chapel Hill, NC and and Columbia, SC are just 231 miles apart, the Gamecocks and Tar Heels have had a remarkably hard time settling upon a date and time to play the back end of a home-and-home series that began in 2007 with South Carolina's narrow 21-15 escape from Kenan Stadium - a victory more infamously known as the sixth and final game that the Gamecocks would win during Steve Spurrier's disappointing third season in Columbia.

After being initially pushed back from a scheduled reunion in 2010, the border rivalry between USC and UNC underwent yet another programming change on Monday: after being pushed back to Saturday from Thursday, the season opener between Carolinas North and South is once again scheduled to be played on Thursday night on ESPN, making 2013 the second consecutive year in which the Gamecocks will help kick off the new college football season.

By moving the game to Thursday, South Carolina will not only launch its new season on a national stage but will also gain two extra days to prepare for the week two game against the division rival Georgia Bulldogs.

Any unexpected change to the football team whatsoever has a tendency to fill me with anxiety (see this, this, and this), but I'm having a hard time finding the bad in this news outside of a few people being disproportionately upset about having to take some time off from work in order to tailgate for what figures to be a 7 PMish kickoff.

We are now this close to the start of college football season, y'all.

Ten young players to keep an eye on this spring
The Big Spur's Wes Mitchell gives you ten underclassmen to watch out for as the Gamecocks hit the Proving Grounds on March 5th.

Drew Barker plans a pair of weekend visits to South Carolina, including the Garnet & Black game
4-star QB target Drew Barker plans to be at South Carolina from March 22-24 and again from April 12-14. Barker is still favoring the Gamecocks despite a strong in-state push from the reinvigorated Kentucky Wildcats.

Barker also appears to have developed quite a bond with Braxton Berrios, for whom the Gamecocks also lead:

@d_barker7 mi familia is tú familia por cuatro anõs. Pero dondè?!? El colegio es..

— Braxton Berrios (@HNYNUT_BERRIOS) February 26, 2013

Travis Haney wonders how South Carolina will replace Ace Sanders' production as a return specialist and has some fascinating insight into the rebuilding project Butch Jones has undertaken at Tennessee.

At this point, I'm convinced that the 2012-13 basketball season exists solely to be analyzed by Chicken Hoops.