Syracuse Vs. Wake Forest: New Starters Ready To Make Their Mark

The Syracuse Orange open the 2011 football season Thursday night when they take on the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Here's the latest news and notes to get you up to speed.

For those asking, yes, the game will be televised in Central New York on Time Warner Cable. In fact, the first four home games will all be televised there, so rest easy locals. It's the rest of us that are f***ed.

I'll have the local Syracuse bars for this week around the country post shortly.

There's a bunch of new starters that will take the field Thursday night, many of whom are on defense. Folks like Deon Goggins are looking forward to it, especially the chance to play in front of the likes of you:

"The type of player I am, I feed off of the lights, the fans, the noise," Goggins said. "It’s going to feel good. I’m used to playing night games, back home in junior college. I love that feeling – just the fans juicing. The only thing now is, instead of 4,500 fans out there, there’s going to be 50,000."

(Please do not show Deon the current attendance projections...)

Speaking of Deon, we're going to know a lot more about the interior of the defensive line Friday morning than we know right now. Goggins and Jay Bromley are the starters but Cory Boatman, Eric Crume, Ollie Haney and Robert Welsh are all looking to make some noise as well.

Jay Bromley is excited to see what freshman Crume and that gargantuan body of his can do.

"He's a big boy, but he's moving," Bromley said. "That's the greatest thing about it. He's a moving big boy, he ain't no slow dude."

Over on the offense, Syracuse had a solid core of wide receivers. Alec Lemon, Van Chew and Jarrod West are just a few of the names you're familiar with. But how bout Michael Acchione? After three seasons on the bench, the senior will finally get a chance to make an impact and he's ready.

"It’s going to be quite the experience if they do," the senior said. "It’s always been my dream to just come out of the tunnel, but now to actually get on the field is just going to be amazing for me. It’s going to make me proud. It’s going to prove a lot of people wrong, because coming out of high school there were a lot of doubters. I used that as motivation to get better every day. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be real great."

On special teams, the punting job has gone to former schollie kicker and current walk-on Shane Raupers. Raups beat-out freshman scholarship player Jonathan Fisher for the job in what we've been told was a close race. But don't tell that to Shane...

"Coming out of the spring, I was still the number one punter even though he was coming in on scholarship. It was kind of my job to lose," said Raupers, who graduated from Athens in 2009. "Nothing really changed, I punted pretty consistently through camp and I thought I did a good job. I didn’t really have to change anything. It was just competing back-and-forth and, obviously, if he was going to punt better than me, he would have got the job."

Rawr!

Video: Looking for a leader -- Syracuse...Andrea Adelson

Starting season cold, warming to the task...Winston-Salem Journal

Pair of wide receivers take backseats on Wake Forest depth chart for game at Syracuse...Syracuse.com