It’s the eve of the season opener, and I’ve got that anxious feeling paralleled only by laying down $50 on an exacta in a 5 1/2-furlong maiden race at The Spaaaaaaaaaaa.

Three pieces of news to report up top ...

1. Tech coach Frank Beamer said he is not planning to play true freshman quarterback Tyrod Taylor tomorrow. The coaching staff seems prepared to preserve Taylor’s redshirt by following the plan from 2005, when Sean Glennon was the No. 2 quarterback behind Marcus Vick, but Cory Holt took mop-up snaps as Glennon redshirted.

This year, Holt will likely handle mop-up duty while Taylor redshirts as the No. 2 quarterback. Unless something happens to Glennon—injury or complete tank job—Taylor will remain on the sideline, it seems. But if Tech needs a quarterback other than Glennon to take significant snaps and try to win games, that quarterback will be Taylor.

Here’s what Beamer had to say after today’s walk through ...

“Right now, we’re not planning on playing him. Now that situation could change. Circumstances could change. But we’re not going to plan to play him. ... We consider him the No. 2 quarterback. ... You just want to do what’s right for him, and you want to do what’s right for the football team. And that’s what we’re trying to do. ... If you play a guy, you want to play him a lot.”

Translation: No sense in burning Taylor’s redshirt year on garbage time.

2. Jared Develli will handle kickoffs. He beat out Jud Dunlevy, who will handle field goals. Beamer seems intent on keeping it that way for the season. “I think they’re like quarterbacks,” he said. “You don’t juggle them in and out.”

3. Well, this isn’t really news. But Beamer said there’s no word on cornerback Roland Minor’s academic status.

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Some observations from last night, the first night of college football ...

- Lou Holtz has officially wandered all the way off the reservation.

- Keep an eye on Oregon State this season. Or so says Washington Post Lord of Lethargy Adam Kilgore.

- Kilgore and I have talked about starting our own college football blog under the domain “www.giveusmorebeano.com,” because, frankly, Carroll Hoff “Beano” Cook does not appear on TV nearly enough for my liking.

- From my travels through Texas last spring, I have a soft spot in my heart for all things Angelo State, that academic beacon of San Angelo. So in this space this season, I will provide weekly updates on the Rams football team, which plays in the Division II Lone Star Conference.

The Rams lost a tough one last night, falling to Division I-AA Sam Houston State 17-13. (By the way, I refuse to stop calling it Division I-AA.) The Bearkats—yes, that is the correct spelling of their nickname—have former Oklahoma quarterback Rhett Bomar. Up next for the Rams: a bye week, followed by a tough roadie to play the East Central Oklahoma Tigers up in Ada. If I know Angelo State coach Dale Carr as well as I think I do—which is to say, not at all—he’ll definitely have the Rams ready for that one.

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I’ve always dreamed of being a court stenographer, but, much to my parents’ disappointment, I chose the much less admirable profession of sports writing. Still, I enjoy stenographing whenever possible, so here are some leftover quotes from this week ...

SEAN GLENNON (he was outstanding at the Tuesday media boondoggle)

On tomorrow’s game—“For about four or five months now I’ve been thinking about it.”

On comparing the game to anything from his past—“I don’t know if this game could be duplicated or have a comparison. The emotion and the togetherness that the 70,000 people in there are going to feel is something that I probably can’t have a benchmark to right now.”

On his connections to April 16 (he went to high school with the gunman and two victims)—“I don’t know if people are looking at me to kind of hold the banner for this whole thing. But I’m intertwined or connected through this whole thing in more ways than one. It definitely makes everything that happened, it just hits real close to home, close to the heart.”

On how he knew this game would be different—“Usually you get the good lucks around campus Thursday, Friday before the game, not two weeks before the game starts. I’ve had people talking about this game – whether it’s a person I’m sitting next to in class, or someone I pass by in the hall, or someone I see out at a bar – they’ve been talking about this for three weeks.”

On Tech’s entrance—“I’d be willing to argue against a lot of teams that there’s nothing in college football like running out to Enter Sandman at Lane Stadium.”

When asked whether the team could be asked to play too big of a role in the healing—“No. I think it’s part of our duty to what we represent. We need to accept that. We’re in this role. We’re in a position where people are always looking at us. And if you didn’t want to be in the position, you probably shouldn’t have come play football here. With that comes high responsibility. I’m not saying that we’re a savior or we’re going to magically help heal. But I don’t think people can say that they’re asking too much of us. They may not get everything they need from us, but they can’t ask for too much from us, because we’ve put ourselves in a position where we need to provide.”

On whether it’s weird that so much is being expected of this team—“It’s weird in a way. At Virginia Tech it always feels like football is more than a game. It definitely is weird when you’re being looked to to do more than just play football. Obviously we’ve talked about this football team as being looked at as a help in the healing process, a way of bringing people together, a relief from everything, an escape, really. It’s weird that playing a sport, playing a game, that you can affect people like that.”

On getting back to normal—“I don’t think there was a moment that felt like we’re back to normal than when we first came out on the field for the start of camp. Nothing felt more right since everything had happened. Playing football to some people just feels so right. It helps more than it distracts.”

EAST CAROLINA COACH LOUIS “SKIP” HOLTZ (from his Sunday teleconference with media mongrels)

On how he expects his players to react to the atmosphere tomorrow—“We’re going to look inside some helmets and just see a pair of eyeballs.”

On playing with a new starting quarterback—“Virginia Tech isn’t exactly where you want to baptize your quarterback.”

On his team being a huge underdog—“There’s a lot of people that, never mind think we can win, there’s a lot of people that don’t think we can make a first down. If we have any kind of success on offense, I think a lot of people will think it’s a successful outing for us. I don’t know if that plays in our favor. I think from a specific game standpoint, from our program’s standpoint, it’s a huge feather in our cap to have the opportunity to play in a game of this magnitude. A lot of people will go through their entire college football career not being able to play in a game of this magnitude on national television with ‘GameDay’ and the atmosphere and the electricity that’s going to be there. I think for a lot of these young players, to have the opportunity to go up and experience that, to have the opportunity to play a team of Virginia Tech’s caliber, I think will be an eye-opening experience for a lot of them. But I think in the long run, it will help us in the long run.”

On this game starting a series with Tech—“When I heard we were playing Virginia Tech, I think I started crying. After I wiped the tears away, I went to Coach Holland [ECU athletic director Terry Holland, the former Virginia Big Whistle for hoops] and asked if I had done something to upset him and he was trying to run me out of here. This has a chance to be a great geographical rivalry. One of the problems in Conference USA is we don’t play anybody in a bordering state.”

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That’s all for tonight. I’ve got to get my beauty sleep so I can gorge myself on the pregame media spread tomorrow. I’ll have more for you guys then.