FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW: UNC VS. SOUTH CAROLINA

The Factor Five Five Factor Preview is back for another season of incredibly wrong predictions and psychological projection. We begin, appropriately, with the first FBS game of the season: UNC vs. South Carolina.

NEBULOUS STATISTICAL COMPARISONS OF DUBIOUS VALIDITY

Unlike other schools (hello, University of Florida!), South Carolina and UNC do a fairly decent job of scheduling schools from power conferences in Week 1; since 1995, the Gamecocks have opened with such an opponent nine times, and the Tar Heels have done so ten times. South Carolina, however, is much better at actually winning those games. They're 6-3, while UNC's gone 2-8 and hasn't opened with a win over a power conference team since beating Indiana in 1997.

To be fair, UNC's had the tougher schedule. Their Week 1 opponents over the past two decades have included FSU, Oklahoma, LSU, and Georgia Tech. South Carolina? 4 of their wins came against NC State and Vanderbilt. As a further caveat, even when South Carolina wins it can be supremely assy.

/blasts box score with flamethrower
/for like a good ten minutes just to be sure

Ok, spread out and check the vents. We can't let this out into the open.

ADVANTAGE: South Carolina

SOUTH CAROLINA, YOU'VE BEEN FACTOR'D!

MASCOT

In previous editions of the Factor Five, we've reminded you that UNC's Rameses is the rare live mascot to achieve succession via patricide.

But Rameses has also been the victim of "slashing death due to drunk man who apparently was hungry or something?"

Hello. My name is Ryan Nanni, and I have never been so drunk that I mutilated a live animal OUT OF HUNGER.

South Carolina counters with Sir Big Spur, who a) is lying about his knighthood and b) has a special Popemobile-style transport to move him around and protect him from assassins.

Coward. At least Rameses faces his drunken attackers.

ADVANTAGE: UNC

UNC, YOU'VE BEEN FACTOR'D!

AURA

This game's being played at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, the home field of the Carolina Panthers. The primary legacy of this stadium? It was the first to be funded through the sale of Personal Seat Licenses, which played a major role in convincing the NFL to award an expansion franchise to Jerry Richardson. For the unfamiliar, a PSL is a fee which gives the holder the right to purchase tickets. It's sort of like a Sam's Club membership, except you get to buy overpriced preseason tickets and the right to see Andy Dalton throw three picks on a Thursday night instead of discounted shampoo and big buckets of Twizzlers.

Oh, and as we mentioned the other day, they've had major trouble selling tickets. Say, which one of these coaches has experience working in a soulless NFL environment that thinks it's far more attractive and worthwhile than it really is?

ADVANTAGE: South Carolina

SOUTH CAROLINA, YOU'VE BEEN FACTOR'D!

NAMES

South Carolina:

Boosie Whitlow
Gage Pucci
Jasper Sasser
Deebo Samuel
Will Sport

North Carolina:

Bentley Spain
Dante DiMaggio
Bug Howard
Dalton Stogner
Charles Brunson

Boosie and Deebo are not the first names listed on the birth certificates of those players, but I'm very happy we live in a world where South Carolina lists them as such on the roster all the same. Will Sport is a name and a sentence fragment, if you're willing to consider "sport" a verb. And I like to imagine Charles Brunson is just the name Charles Bronson adopted after faking his own death.

But, damn, BENTLEY SPAIN. That's just special.

ADVANTAGE: UNC

UNC, YOU'VE BEEN FACTOR'D!

GRUDGES/SCORES TO SETTLE/SHEER CUSSEDNESS

The Tar Heels lead this series 32-18-4 (including one of the rarest butterflies, the 0-0 tie), but the Gamecocks have won five of the last six and beat UNC by seventeen points when these two teams last played in 2013. South Carolina starting quarterback is from Raleigh, which might tilt things towards the Gamecocks, but we're obscuring the real issue.

Steve Spurrier has two modes, both of them salty and hateful. The first is directed at his opponent. This is usually what you see after he beats Georgia or Clemson, or talks about Auburn or Tennessee during the offseason. The second, however, focuses on his own team. These are quotes from Steve Spurrier from the past week:

"Hopefully, we're not as overconfident as maybe we were last year. We're not overconfident, I can say that for sure. Hopefully, we'll be anxious to show the country that we're a pretty good team."

"We played pretty well in preseason practices on defense (last year). In fact, our defense stopped the offense very often in our scrimmages and then all of a sudden in that game we really struggled."

"North Carolina had a year on defense kind of like we had."

Two self-hatin' quotes for every them-hatin' quote indicates that Spurrier's likely saving most of his bile for the Georgia game in a couple of weeks. And without that sass, well, this factor goes UNC's way on the grounds of revenge.

ADVANTAGE: UNC

UNC, YOU'VE BEEN FACTOR'D!

FINAL TOTAL: UNC 3, SOUTH CAROLINA 2. The SEC is doomed, y'all.