COLUMBIA, Mo. - The drive this afternoon from St. Louis was shorter than expected, less than two hours, but also uneventful. Very, very uneventful. There is a vast space of nothing in the eastern part of Missouri.

Now I'm here, and ensconced in the press box a scant four-plus hours before kickoff. Several of us Georgia beat guys are here, one of us having arrived early and told security that not opening the press box till three hours before the game "won't cut it in the SEC."

I'm struck by how wide-open Faurot Field seems. It's not huge - it almost seems like it was once a big high school stadium, and they decided to build on it and make it a major college football stadium. Not to say it's small, because it can seat up to 75,000, which is more than Georgia Tech and the Mississippi schools.

But it's not intimate. A colleague of mine wondered if it could get very loud because it's too much in the open. The major road through campus is less than a stone's throw from the stadium itself.

The turf is field turf, the same kind they use in almost every dome now. A small rubberized track circles the field.

All in all, though, it is neat being at a new place, and one that apparently Georgia fans should get to know well. There's a lot of gold around campus, with a smattering or red and black. I can't say right now what the ratio will be come game time, but I'll let you know.