Only DeAndre Thompkins Until Penn State Football

So we have this e-mail chain that all of your favorite BSD writers (and Devon) use to communicate with one another. It's mostly a thread where I fire off the random musings that are frequently bouncing around within my skull, Nick talks about recruiting and Chad will say a Chad thing once in a while. That's 98 percent of what goes on in there, but in the small sliver that makes up the other two percent, we do things like assign stories to one another.

Way back in June or July, we got the email asking who we wanted to take which day in our Days Until series. While I was basically content to take any day, the one day that I really, really wanted – besides One Day Until, which I really wanted because I was just going to write a Penn State-themed version of One Day More from Les Mis – was Three Days Until.

This is because the guy who is going to wear No. 3 this season, DeAndre Thompkins, is going to light the fucking world on fire.

Here's everything you need to know about Thompkins: he was a four-star recruit out of North Carolina who was famous in high school for being a potential scoring threat whenever he touched the ball. Thompkins committed to Penn State, looked like he might have flipped to North Carolina after his lead recruiter – Larry Johnson – left for Ohio State, but he stuck around. He redshirted his freshman year, because he came into Penn State weighing 170 lbs., and if he got hit by a Big Ten linebacker weighing 170 lbs., it's fair to think that he'd have been snapped in half.

Now, he's put on 15 lbs., is still one of the fastest players on the team, and very well could be the kind of dynamic slot receiver who can take the top off of a defense that we haven't seen in years. As was the case in high school, every time Thompkins touches the ball, he can potentially take it to the house. Whether it be in the passing game, in the return game, or even getting handed the ball in the running game, Thompkins is just a straight-up playmaker.

If – and of course this is a big if because we're dealing with someone who has taken as many college snaps as I have – we're able to see Thompkins turn into the type of threat that we all expect, hoo boy. Penn State has plenty of talent on the outside at receiver, but the Nittany Lions don't quite have anyone like Thompkins. He could open things up for everyone just as quickly as everyone else opens up things for him.

I can't wait.

Three more days.