Appalachian State head coach Jerry Moore was last seen on the football field lifting the NCAA Division I-AA football national championship trophy. Saturday he will lead the Moutaineers on the field against NC State in the season opener for both teams. Moore met with the media on the Southern Conference teleconference Tuesday morning. Click below for the audio from that, and a transcript is also provided.

They recruit nationwide. They go to Florida. You read about the players about they sign. They were a really good football team last year. They got four, five or six of those guys that are probably going to make it to the NFL. Coach Amato has been there at Florida State, good staff. It's just going to be a challenge for us.

When you play a ball club like them, every year we play at least 1-A school, when you get right down to it the really big difference from 1-AA to 1-A is we have 63 scholarships, they got 85. So there is a depth disparity. We got one pretty good tight end, they probably got three. They go against each other in practice. We don't practice against competition regularly like they do. That's one thing.

The next thing when you play somebody like them is just the mistakes. You can't make mistakes and expect to beat that kind of football team. We need to keep them to a minimum. That's a thing that we've talked about with our players.

In the kicking game, I think anytime you are in those kind of ballgames the kicking game is key. I use LSU, in terms of kicking, for example we missed a field goal just before the half down at LSU. It wouldn't have been a difference in the game but it would have helped momentum. When we played Kansas a year ago I think kicking game was the difference in the ball game, so I think that's huge.

Well I think it's too early to compare this team to last year's team. That group played 15 ballgames, this one hasn't even been on the field yet. It's just way too soon. We've worked awfully hard. We've got what should be a good nucleus. There is something that people lose sight of, that football team last year that won a championship, at one point when they were all sophomores they were 1-3. We started off horrible. They grew up through that. Whether this bunch can do that or not just remains to be seen.

[NC State] played very well against South Florida. I think you always its important for the bowl caliber teams not to just go to the bowl, but to go to a bowl game and win. They did that. I am sure that they are pointing towards looking forward to this season because they got a lot of good football players.

Well Trey Elder will start for us at quarterback. He's played, he's played a lot of big games all the way back to his high school career at Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C. When Trey was a freshman Richie was dinged up a little bit when we played Texas State, he started and played the entire game against Texas State. He was put into the Furman game which was before the semifinal game a year ago, played very well. He started the championship game and played pretty well. We had some turnovers, but really he did not have that much to do with it except for one of them. But other than that, he's never gone into a season since high school where it's like he is right now, where he's the guy. I think it's a little different for a quarterback and maybe any position really, but particularly for a quarterback to be the starter from the get-go rather than come off the bench. I think it's a little easier to come off the bench than it is to have the burden of proving it every time the ball is snapped all week long you can play.

I am going to say leadership. I go all the way back to the Texas State game. He was relatively an unknown player until about the third or fourth game of his freshman year, true freshman. We tried to get to Richie ready, tried on Thursday, decided he couldn't play, Trey becomes the guy. He goes and works out with the ones all week, so he is officially the quarterback. Same thing coming off the bench against Furman. His first throw was a touchdown. He controls the game. He won the game for us. I think our players have a lot of confidence in him. I think they respect him. His leadership part would probably be the best thing.

He will not start.

It's an ankle.

Well we don't know yet. We just go to, right now he is 2-0, 3-0. He hasn't played anybody the caliber of these guys. We all know that. These guys, myself, haven't played anybody. I'm not taking anything away from playing Northern Iowa. Playing Northern Iowa and playing Furman isn't like playing North Carolina State. We all know that. They are good football teams, but they're not as good as these guys for sure. So I don't know. It's going to be hard to see. Trey has prepared well. He's going to run our football team. We are going to give him all the help we can give him.