Alyssa Lang talks South Carolina on GamecockCentral Takeover Hour on 107.5 The Game

SEC Network’s Alyssa Lang, a University of South Carolina alum and former GamecockCentral intern, joined the GamecockCentral Takeover Hour on 107.5 The Game Thursday to break down the Gamecocks’ win over Virginia Tech and look ahead to the rest of the season.

Check out the transcript and audio of her appearance below!

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Q: Welcome back—how are things at the SEC Network when South Carolina is good and back in the top 10?

A: Yeah, it’s fun for me certainly. Thank y’all for having me. I actually was just telling some of my colleagues last night as we were getting ready for our show and putting everything together that if this continues, prepare for me to be insufferable. And I know they all are taking me completely seriously when it comes to that. I can’t remember being this excited for Carolina football since, honestly, I was in school when we had the great years of Jadaveon Clowney and Connor Shaw and, of course, Steve Spurrier in the last few years of his career. It’s definitely a lot of fun right now to be a Gamecock in SEC country.

Q: The South Carolina–Virginia Tech game for you—kind of a little extra special with your family ties? We saw you watching with family—how was that?

A: Yeah, it’s really honestly kind of bizarre when I think about my college football fandom and how it’s sort of culminated in this 2025 South Carolina team.

So both of my parents went to Virginia Tech. I was raised on Hokie football—we were in Blacksburg every weekend that I can remember throughout college football season and then at times for college basketball when Tech was good. But I was raised on really some incredible college football in the late 90s, early 2000s with Frank Beamer.

I told the story when Shane was hired and I was a little embarrassed when I heard that Frank had actually heard the story—my childhood dog’s name was Beamer. When I was eight years old and we got a dog, we named her Beamer after Frank. Like, that’s how insane fans we were.

And fast forward, you know, I end up going to South Carolina and we have love for that school as well, my dad kind of starts pulling for South Carolina and then lo and behold, now Shane Beamer ends up at my alma mater and I get to watch, quite frankly, one of my college football heroes in Frank wear Carolina gear in my school and it’s just the craziest full-circle college football fandom that I could ever imagine.

I joke that I cannot believe that Frank Beamer and his wife Cheryl watch the SEC Network and, like, have seen me on TV before. Nine-year-old Alyssa would be screaming about that. So yeah, it was bittersweet sort of watching the game on Sunday. I had no qualms about who I was pulling for, obviously. And I will say my dad though—he wants Virginia Tech to return to the glory days and get back to where they were—he came out in the second half in a Carolina shirt because that’s how much he loves Shane Beamer and the Beamer family. So he was pulling for both despite having the degree from Virginia Tech. So it was fun and I am very happy about the result.

Q: In that game we saw a huge play from Nyck Harbor—99 yards and a score, should’ve had two. You talked to him on SEC Now—what’s your read?

A: Yeah, and you used the word “finally.” It’s true. And that’s why I asked him one of the questions that I asked him in that interview, which was, hey, there’s so many people who don’t really know what this journey has been like for you and don’t really know where you were as far as not having played the wide receiver position when you got to school and truly, in a sense, having to learn how to be a receiver.

And it has taken a little bit, right? Like, you talk about expectations and when a guy like that gets off the bus and is making the Feldman Freaks list and is what he is on the college football video game, of course people are going to expect him to contribute right away. And the first few seasons weren’t necessarily what we all hoped they would be. But to start the game early with a catch and then, like he said, a touchdown—should have been two—yes, I think we all fully agree with you.

This could finally be the Nick Harbor—as I tweeted—video game season that we’ve all been waiting for. So it had to be as well, right? I mean, you look at what this team brings back offensively and outside of everything South Carolina lost on defense, that was the question that everyone has been asking—asking me, asking on television—is who’s going to catch the football from LaNorris Sellers if Nyck Harbor’s not rounded into form?

Yeah, we saw flashes from Mazeo Bennett a season ago, but obviously that’s a young room with some relatively new names from a national landscape. So seeing what we saw from Nyck Harbor Game 1 gives me so much more confidence than I have ever seen from him, from this young offense, going into the rest of the season. I just hope they can keep it up and continue to build on that.

Q: You dropped power rankings with your SEC Network colleagues—LSU 1, Georgia 2, and you and Ben Watson both have South Carolina 3 in the SEC. Why USC that high after Week 1?

A: Yeah, thank you for saying that Benjamin Watson also has South Carolina at number three, because the social media comments, you would think that I’m the only one that has South Carolina number three, which is fine. I knew I was gonna get some accusations of bias there. It’s okay. It’s an impossible exercise, let’s be honest, to rank 16 teams through Week 1, especially knowing what those matchups look like, right?

Texas goes on the road to Ohio State, defending national champions, and then you’ve got a team like I had on Saturday—Kentucky taking on Toledo—and they barely scrape out a win against the Toledo team. So I said this last night on the show: these are all just purely based off of Week 1 games that we still don’t really feel super sure about.

And I’m pretty confident in saying that I think my teams ranked at 7 through 16 could honestly plug and play anywhere, and you could make an argument for any of those placements.

Why I put South Carolina at number three—obviously the caliber of the opponent. And I’m not saying that Virginia Tech’s a team that, oh, we’re screaming and shouting out of the ACC is going to go make the playoff or win a national championship. But looking at the fact that it was a neutral site, it’s an emotional game, it’s a Virginia Tech team that should have been better this season—that, for me, carries a bit more weight than some of the other matchups.

Outside of that, especially when I look at the top five—I believe I went LSU 1, Georgia 2, South Carolina 3, Texas 4, A&M 5, and Tennessee 6, if I remember correctly—a lot of that for me is just based on quarterback.

LSU and Georgia are those teams on paper that you can look at and go, okay, LSU number one transfer portal class in the country, they go on the road to Clemson, gut out a tough win, they lean on their defense that they haven’t been able to do in the last couple of seasons. To me, LSU, based on what I saw, I do believe right now is the contender for number one team in the country.

For Georgia, it’s sort of the Kirby Smart effect, right? Kirby has reloaded, not rebuilt, every single season. I liked what I saw from Gunner Stockton. You hold Marshall to zero points and under 100 yards through three quarters, knowing that you’re getting three and four deep on that defense—that says a lot.

Now after that, for South Carolina, I would sit there and go, okay, the Texas fans, the A&M fans, the Tennessee fans that are screaming at me, saying no way South Carolina is better—I would ask you, which quarterback would you rather have after Week 1?

I’m taking LaNorris Sellers every single time based off of what we saw. So that alone was what put South Carolina top three for me—knowing that yes, LaNorris made some mistakes and there were some things we need to clean up, but that’s the case for everybody during Week 1. I saw enough to see that he has continued to develop from last season. The way he cut through some of those defenders like butter early in the game all the way until the end on that, what, third-and-13 in the fourth quarter—that was unbelievable for him to pick up a first down.

That is all the argument I think I need to say, all right, switch quarterbacks then—and I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of rational people out there who are actually going to do it. I think people want LaNorris Sellers.

Q: Quick one before break—you have Alabama at number 10. Panic meter in Tuscaloosa?

A: Yeah, I mean, you have to put them there because you’re not supposed to lose that game, right? Like we have to be fair here in these rankings for what people showed us. If Alabama doesn’t improve, the panic meter is going to get high.

I was one of those people who was high on Alabama going into this season—I really thought the defense would take a step forward. They were missing some key pieces—Tim Keenan on the defensive side, Jam Miller on the offensive side. If they can clean that up, certainly next week against Wisconsin will be the next big-ish test.

I’m not hitting panic yet, but we certainly need to start sweating a little bit if we see the lack of effort this upcoming weekend again against ULM. Their last unranked loss at home was that 2007 game against Louisiana-Monroe. They have not lost to an unranked team at home since. Could you imagine?

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