The waiting is finally over.

It's been a long 9 months, but alas Saturday will be the start of a new football season and the start of the Mike London era.  On this football eve, we would like to re-post our article from December 7, 2009, the day we hired our new ball coach.  Enjoy!

Quick departure from football folks.  Today, the ACC released the Men's Basketball Schedule for this year.  Here's a look at what's on tap for this year.

Nov. 12 vs. William & Mary
Nov. 15 vs. South Carolina-Upstate
Nov. 18 at Stanford
Nov. 22 vs. Washington in Maui Invitational
Nov. 23 Maui Invitational
Nov. 24 Maui Invitational
Nov. 29 at Minnesota
Dec. 5 at Virginia Tech
Dec. 7 vs. Radford
Dec. 17 vs. Oregon
Dec. 20 vs. Norfolk State
Dec. 22 vs. Seattle
Dec. 30 vs. Iowa State
Jan. 2 vs. Louisiana State
Jan. 4 vs. Howard
Jan. 8 vs. North Carolina
Jan. 15 at Duke
Jan. 19 at Boston College
Jan. 22 vs. Georgia Tech
Jan. 27 vs. Maryland
Jan. 29 at Wake Forest
Feb. 2 vs. Clemson
Feb. 5 at Miami
Feb. 12 at Florida State
Feb. 16 vs. Duke
Feb. 19 vs. Virginia Tech
Feb. 23 at Georgia Tech
Feb. 26 vs. Boston College
March 1 vs. North Carolina State
March 5 at Maryland
March 10-13 ACC Tournament in Greensboro, N.C.

Come on in.  Have a seat.  The Shammy knows why you are here.

We are bringing back one of our favorite parts of football season:  College Football Picks.  Each week, we will be selecting a variety of college football games from all across the nation and put our hard earned "money" and pride on the line.  We only bet against the spread, because telling you that "Ohio State will beat Eastern New Mexico School of Rocks" is not much of a stretch.  All lines are the official Vegas/Off Shore Betting lines as of the time of the article that can be verified by anyone [Legal Disclaimer:  Lambeth Field or the Shammy does not condone illegal betting of any kind.  For entertainment purposes only.  Except in Vegas, where it is both legal and entertaining.  I mean, have you been to those.....what....oh, yeah, don't do it.]

For those who don't know what we are talking about, let me give you an example from this first game of the season.

Southern Mississippi @ South Carolina (-14) -105

The above example means that South Carolina is favored to beat Southern Mississippi by 14 points.  If you believe that USC will beat USM by more than 14 points, you bet on the Gamecocks.  If you think the Golden Eagles will lose by less than 14 points or wins, you bet on Southern Miss.  If the Cocks beat the G-Eagles by 14 exactly, it is a "push" and no money is won or lost.  For our picks, we will not be taking any "juice", which show up as -105 or -110 in the money lines.  This means you would pay 5 or 10 percent to the book service for your bet, which is how they make most of their money.  We will track our winning percentage all season.  55% and you make your money back, 60% and you will make some money, 61% or more, you're welcome.  Alright let's get to the picks.

No more waiting.  We're here.  It's time.  Yada, yada, yada.

While most of Eastern Virginia will be soaked from Hurricane Earl on Friday, we will be enjoying picture perfect weather in Charlottesville.  And what more fitting way to start the London Era than to bring in his old team, the Richmond Spiders.  To preface this article, this is not the team that won the championship in 2008, or the team that went to the quarterfinals of the D-IAA tournament in 2009.  This team lost 15 of its 22 starters from last year and is going though a little bit of an identity crisis of their own.  Let's take a gander at the 2010 version of the Richmond Spiders.

Coaching Staff

When you poach their top man in Mike London in the off season, Richmond turned to UVa assistant coach Latrell Scott.  Unlike London, Scott spent most of his time on the offensive side of the ball, serving both UVA and Tennessee as an WR coach.  In addition to Scott, there are 7 assistants for Richmond with ties to the Hoos.  But it's not a one way street.  The Cavs have 5 assistants that have ties to Richmond, including former head coach and new defensive coordinator Jim Reid.  To say that these two teams know each other well is an understatement.

Offense

Richmond's bread and butter has been running the spread offense.  And not that "spread" that we saw the first 4 games of last season, a REAL spread offense.  It starts around their wide receivers RSr. Kevin Grayson, RJr. Tre Gray, and RJr. Donte Boston.  This trio is arguably the best WR core in D-IAA. Grayson has 2,368 yards and 12 TDs in his career, Gray has 1,436 yards and 8 TDs, and Boston has 577 yards and 4 TDs.  Grayson only needs 302 more yards to become U of R's career receiving yardage leader, which he will get plenty of chances to best this year.

The biggest battles in the offseason came at quarterback and running back.  Luckily for Richmond, half of that battle was over when former USC quarterback Aaron Corp transferred to Richmond over the summer.  He won the "battle" in fall practice to start over last years backup, John Laub.  Say what you want to about Corp, but to be recruited to start for a national championship team shows that he has some skills, although this is a departure from the traditional pro-set he was used to playing with the Trojans.  The running back contest has still not been won, so Richmond will use a "running back by committee".  Sound familiar?  The winners this week are Jr. Garrett Wilkins, who can catch it out of the backfield and run laterally off the delayed handoff, RSr. Tyler Kirchoff, and RFr. Jovan Smith, who they believe can be the next Tim Hightower.

But Richmond's biggest holes to fill are along the offense line.  They only return 1 starter:  RSr. center Drew Lachenmayer.  Anchoring the line is another transfer student from Rutgers, Richard Muldrow.  Outside of that, it's going to be interesting who else can step up to keep pressure off of Corp.

Defense

Richmond runs a 4-3 base with one NG above center and a DT on the strong side.  This side of the ball was decimated as well due to graduation, but the players that return are very good.  Three of them have been named to the Buck Buchanan Watch List, which is D-IAA's version of the national defensive player of the year award, and they have one at each level.  RSr. Martin Parker is a captain and will be playing the DT along the line, and had a nasty ability to get in the backfield (15.5 TFL, 6.5 sacks in '09).  Another captain is RSr. OLB Eric McBride, who has started 43 straight games for the Spiders and has 327 tackles in his 3 years in Richmond.  But the most dangerous player on this defense is defensive back/kick returner Justin Rodgers.  The Preseason All-American has 10 INTs and 2 TDs as a corner and 2,102 yards and 2 TDs as a kick returner.  This defense last year set up 116 points off of turnovers last year, most of the turnovers coming from the secondary, which is by far the best overall defensive unit that Richmond fields.

Special Teams

Uh, this is an interesting unit.  The good:  their returners are really good, headlined by the afore mentioned Justin Rodgers, who already has the U of R all-time record and only needs 332 more yards to break the CAA record.  The bad:  the kickers.  Sophomore Wil Kamin will replace four year starter Andrew Howard and converted QB (yes quarterback) Nick Hicks will handle the punting.

How Virginia Wins

As I am writing this I am watching the special on HBO about the 1980 US Hockey team.  During that famous game against USSR, Herb Brooks kept telling his players to "Play your game".  London should be telling his team the same.  The energy and emotion will be running wild in the first half.  They need to keep it up throughout the game.  On offense, they will need to establish the run to keep the secondary honest, so that Verica can find his receivers in space.  Hopefully, one of the 4 Cav running backs will step up and shoulder the load.  Keeping the pressure off of Mark should be job number two, not only for the line, but for the fullback as well.  The Hoos must win the turnover battle.  Better yet, you can count on Richmond scoring off turnovers, so keeping that number at 0 would be great.  On defense, the corners win the battle vs. the Richmond wide receivers, which should be the best matchup of the evening.  Other than that, rattling Corp early should be fairly easy, considering London loves to blitz.  Richmond will score, but if the Hoos can get to 24 points, they should have this one wrapped up.

How Virginia Loses

They have the W&M game in the back of their head and aren't ready mentally for Richmond, who has nothing to lose.  Some interesting stats for Richmond:

• Richmond has the nations 2nd longest road winning streak at 12 games, only I-A Boise State has more at 13.
• Since 2005, the Spiders are 35-3 when scoring 30 points or more per game.
• Richmond is the only D-IAA team since 1985 to beat ACC teams back to back seasons (Furman over N.C. State)
• And since 2005, they have scored first in 42 of 66 games, going 35-7 in those games.

Well, it's about time.

The hardest part about the first week of football is waiting for information to come out, especially since this is London's first year.  Today, thankfully, Virginia (1) released the depth chart for the Richmond game and (2) London, coaches, and players had the chance to talk to the media.  Mike London did not disappoint with the two-deep, throwing a ton of curve-balls at everyone.  Let's go through the positions for the home-opener and our surprise factor.

QB - S: Verica, B: Metheny OR Rocco.  Surprise Factor: 5

We all knew who the starter was going to be, MV6.  The interesting part London talked about today was the fact that the backup roll was still going to be determined this week in practice between Ross and Mike.  Obviously, Mike Rocco made a very good impression on Mr. London, good enough to possibly burn his redshirt this year.  Ultimately, I believe that unless Metheny has a very bad next couple of weeks and UVa doesn't blow out or get blown out that he will see the field over Metheny.  UVa has had mixed results with freshman quarterbacks, the last one being Anthony Martinez starting at South Carolina in 2003.  That did not go well.  But the year before, Groh mixed up Matt Schaub with Marques Hagans, who turned out to be a very good quarterback for 2 years.

TB- S: Jones OR Horne; FB- S: Milien, B: Fells-Danzer.  Surpise Factor: 8

When you have open compitition, you shouldn't be really shocked to see who emerges.  Jones was at the top of the list after the spring and held on to that spot.  But he is in a virtual tie with 'the comeback kid' Raynard Horne, who was impressive on special teams, and will now get a shot in the backfield.  Two interesting notes.  First, no Wallace on the depth chart, which mean he might need a little more time to adjust to this pro-set offense.  Secondly, London is about 50-50 today in redshirting Kevin Parks Jr.  London believes this kid can be special, and wants four years out of the 1st year with the log jam at running back.  The real shocker was that Milien had moved in front of Fells-Danzer at fullback.  Another point of emphasis was the use of the fullback in pass blocking situations, and apparently this was the deciding factor in getting Max the start.  Look for this just to be the jumping off point for all members of the backfield this year.

WR- S: Burd, Inman, B: Smith, Green; TE- S: Torchia, B: Freedman, Phillips.  Surprise Factor: 9

And the plot thickens.  Kris Burd was a lock and we thought Tim Smith was the other lock, but folks around Charlottesville noticed over the past week that Tim Smith was in a walking boot, so the injury must have pushed him into a backup roll.  It is also possible that he could be the slot receiver on a 3-wide set.  If in fact Tim Smith is injured, this takes away a lot of vertical speed from the passing attack.  Well talk about him a little later also.  Green was pretty much a given as a back up.  Like the quarterback situation, Torchia was set as the top tight end, but the emergence of 2nd year Paul Freedman was very much under the radar.  Look for him to come in in jumbo sets as the blocking tight end, with Colter Phillips backing up Joe.

OL- S: Bradley, Pasztor, Mihota, Cabbell, Aboushi, B: Cascarano, Cain, Price, Mihalik, Moses.  Surprise Factor: 2

The line was pretty much set again in the spring.  Moses will back up Aboushi, but look for a lot of playing time from the true freshman as he will not redshirt this year.  Yeah for RFr. Sean Cascarano getting a true backup role.  After Moses, he will be the #2 guy off the bench.

DE- S: Parr, Johnson B: Snyder, Mathis; DT- S: Dolce, Jenkins B: Conrath, Hill.  Surprise Factor:  8

Wow.  I would take either the first or second string to start for my D-IA team any day.  And what really stands out is Dolce is in front of Conrath.  London is pulling out a play from his Richmond playbook, going with speed over size in this case.  But look for all of these guys to get in the game, and early, if the offense can't stay on the field.

SLB- S: Reynolds OR Carter; MLB- S: Taliaferro OR Greer; WLB- S: Walcott B: Detrick.  Surprise Factor: 5

It's only stunning that it seems that the linebacker positions have not been set yet.  The starters will be determined in practice this week as well.  And the one position that we thought was set, got flipped around and went to the training camp work horse, Ausar Walcott at the Will Linebacker.

CB- S: Dowling, Minnifield B: Wallace, Parker; FS- S: Mosley B: Joseph; SS- S: McLeod OR Womack.  Surprise Factor: 1

No surprises here.  Look for Wallace to play in the Nickel and Womack to play in the Dime.  Dowling said today that he will be ready to go, and that's good enough for me.

P- Howell; PK- Randolph; KO- Hinkebein; HOLD- Hodges; LS- Aiken Surprise Factor: 2

Not a huge fan, but I trust London's decision on this one.  He did say that Hinkebein has hit from 55 in practice, and might come in for the really long kicks.  Yikes!  Another yeah for Jacob Hodges getting the holding job.  We like to see the walk-ons get playing time.

PR- S: Minnifield B: Jones; KR- Jones AND Horne.  Surprise Factor:  4

Minnifield's experience won out in the end for punt returns.  Jones and Horne's quickness won out on kick returns when there is space.  But the biggest thing to take away from this list is no Tim Smith.  Mike London had said he wanted the best players with the ball and Tim is a very, very good player with the ball, but it seems the injury kept him off the list.

Folks, this is just the first game, and it is against Richmond so we will let this one play out.  That's all for now.