College Open Thread: October 4

Plenty of top scouting today. And with conference football in full swing, it's an all day affair. We're talking 12-hour runs at this point, folks. Let's get it on.

Here are your notes for the day from Mocking the Draft.

#25 Maryland at #8 Florida St. (12:00 p.m., ESPN)

There hasn't been a more surprising team in college football than Maryland this season. Two years ago, Randy Edsall showed up in College Park and began running a Greg Schiano-type show. His way or the highway. In the course of a year, 24 players transferred. Twenty four...one of whom was then freshman All-ACC QB Danny O'Brien. The local press was devouring him. Fast-forward two years, and you see why he was hired. The Terps are 4-0 and coming off of a complete drubbing of West Virginia winning 37-0 and cracking the top 25 for the first time since 2010. Now they're still putting the talent together. Outside of CB Dexter McDougle, whose season ended with a shoulder injury last month, and OLB Macus Whitfield, they're not offering much from their seniors. But true sophomore WR Stefon DIggs is a real talent. If they can hold on to their early signees, things could be looking up on the northwest side of DC in 2014...

Today, though, they're still overmatched. Is an upset possible? Sure. But Florida State is the better team at this point, and it's not all that close. I've got Cameron Erving as the #2 OT on my tackle board right now. Christian Jones might be the best middle linebacker in the country. Timmy Jernigan is a shifty DT. Lamarcus Joyner is one of the most competitive CB/SS hybrids out there, though a bit undersized. James Wilder is, for my money, the best RB in the country on the field (he's a bit crazy off it...so I left him at #2 on my RB board). And young RS freshman QB Jameis Winston looks really, really, really good.

Backups: Illinois at Nebraska (12pm, ESPNU), UNC at Virginia Tech (12:30pm, ESPN3)

#6 Georgia at Tennessee (3:30 p.m., CBS)

Look. I put up my O-line board yesterday. The traffic says Rams fans are interested in O-line talent. So if you're reading this, this is your game for OL options.

Let's break it down:

So that's 8 (perhaps 9 if not everyone's a jerk) NFL prospects on just two lines....and that's just the starters. Two years from now, we'll be looking at 10 new guys and picking out at least a couple to keep tabs on.

But Kolton Houston. His story is confounding. Kolton Houston was the recipient of an incorrectly applied steroid injection during a shoulder surgery while he was in high school. The steroids were inappropriately injected into some fatty tissue, never leaving his system. And since it never left, he continued to fail drug test after drug test after drug test after drug test after drug test after drug test (continue repeating until over 100 "after drug test"s). Here, just watch this:

So here's a kid who (I guess) made a mistake and tried to remedy it by sitting in a sauna up to 8 hours a day and having surgery to remove healthy fatty tissue that would if not for storing Nandrolone would normally just sit around in your body. And now he's back.

This is an official team picture of Kolton Houston:

The mustache...the bangs....the dead eyes....the mouth that is so confusingly caught between a fake photo smile and being normal....

Kolton Houston might just be the most Georgia player ever. And I hope this kid mauls the fuck out of everybody every single play.

Backups: #3 Clemson at Syracuse (3:30pm, ABC/ESPN2), Minnesota at #19 Michigan (3:30pm, ABC/ESPN2) - coverage maps