Gamecocks Football Summer Road Trip: Charlotte, NC

Charlotte, North Carolina. The Queen City. One of the South's finest metropolitan areas. (This is not being written by a former five-year resident of Charlotte. OK, maybe it is.) A city that rivals Atlanta. (Or, a city that wants to be like Atlanta, if you're a resident of the Georgia state capital.) It's the home of Bank of America, the Coca-Cola 600, Price's Chicken Coop, and the primary filming site of the Showtime series Homeland. But it doesn't have a zoo. Columbia has a zoo; Asheboro has a zoo; Charlotte doesn't.

The Gamecocks are playing the North Carolina Tar Heels at Bank of America Stadium on September 3, so we thought we'd take a little virtual road trip up I-77 to give you a tour of the city:

Named After: Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of King George III. They figured later that they'd go ahead and name the county after her, too, so that's where Mecklenburg County gets its name.

Distance from Columbia: From Williams-Brice to BofA, it's 99 miles.

Drive or fly? Google Maps says it's usually a 90-minute drive, but Google Maps has never been on I-77 in the middle of rush hour heading out of Charlotte.

Pro teams: Hornets, Panthers, Knights (AAA baseball).

Famous Charlotteans: A lot. Senior SPUR Larenz Bryant is from there, too. Landon Ard, Gerald Dixon, Gerald Dixon Jr. and three other active players are from Rock Hill, a Charlotte suburb. So is some guy named Clowney.

Uptown or downtown? Uptown.

Why? No idea.

Career at BofA: 1-0. 56-37 against East Carolina on September 4, 2011.