On South Carolina's NCAA news ...

Georgia won the Fulmer Cup. South Carolina may win the Tarkanian Cup.

There's news out of Columbia, S.C., this evening: South Carolina has received an official letter of inquiry from the NCAA into its football program. Here's a link to the story in The State by our old friend Josh Kendall.

Clearly, this is not good news for the Gamecocks. But how bad is it?

First off, I know the main concern to Bulldog fans is whether this has an adverse affect on the Gamecocks' preparation, and is any sort of distraction, for Saturday. You wouldn't think it would, since it's a procedural matter that doesn't directly affect the players. But who knows, I've never been on a college football team that got a letter of inquiry from the NCAA less than 48 hours before a big game.

Will this affect the eligibility of any players in Saturday's game? Tight end Weslye Saunders was long since ruled out, while two other starters - CB Chris Culliver and OT Jarriel King - are still up in the air. But while their cases may be part of this investigation, the news of the letter itself may not directly impact their status for Saturday.

In the long term, this could potentially be pretty harmful to South Carolina. Some may try to draw the parallel to Georgia's letter from the NCAA in July. But that was related to one player, who we know officially now to have been A.J. Green, and was not an official letter of inquiry.

South Carolina's was a letter of inquiry. The school has been dealing with not only the agent probe, but the Whitney Hotel situation. And the letter it received on Thursday sounds wide-ranging, and potentially very serious.