Preseason practice offers a glimpse at depth chart strengths and weaknesses. We’re left with some questions.

One player we’re not questioning: Nico Iamaleava. The buzz around Tennessee’s redshirt freshman quarterback is reminiscent of the hype surrounding Peyton Manning, Heath Shuler and Condredge Holloway. Iamaleava is worthy of that hype.

Some other positions are on squishier footing.

On this edition of “The Volunteer State,” Blake Toppmeyer of the USA TODAY Network and the News Sentinel’s Adam Sparks and John Adams discuss three burning questions that remain unanswered as preseason practice winds down and the Week 1 game against Chattanooga nears.

Is Tennessee football’s Cam Seldon healthy and ready?

Tennessee’s running back depth remains an area of concern. Dylan Sampson is dependable atop the depth chart, but the situation gets murkier after that. The Vols will be better position after Cam Seldon returns from a shoulder injury.

When will that be?

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Seldon wore a non-contact jersey during practice periods that were open to reporters in the preseason, but coach Josh Heupel recently said that Seldon is “full go.”

Whether “full go” means Seldon will play against Chattanooga is unclear. More important will be having him healthy against NC State in Week 2. A shoulder injury is no small deal for a running back.

Will Bru McCoy return to form?

McCoy suffered a serious ankle injury last season that cut his season short after five games. Watching him in practice this month, you wouldn’t know he was ever injured. He’s returned to form and will be part of the first-tier wide receiver rotation that includes Squirrel White and transfer Chris Brazzell II.

As to who will lead Tennessee in receptions, that’s another question. White is the smart choice. The ball comes to the slot receiver a lot in Heupel’s offense. White led the offense in receptions last season, and he’ll probably do it again. But a healthy McCoy makes the offense much more dynamic.

Will Boo Carter start the opener? And will Vols really start walk-on safety Will Brooks?

Let’s take Carter first: The four-star true freshman is talented enough to start as Tennessee’s nickelback, but defensive coordinator Tim Banks usually favors older players. Against Chattanooga, Carter must prove he’s ready for a big role.

Walk-ons tend to generate preseason buzz before falling behind scholarship players once the season arrives. Brooks isn’t fading, though. Expect him to earn snaps at safety.

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Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s SEC Columnist and a published author. John Adams is the News Sentinel’s senior columnist and a two-time published author. Adam Sparks covers the Vols with award-winning coverage for the News Sentinel. You can subscribe to read all their coverage, or check out the SEC Unfiltered newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – As summer comes to a close, an invasive species of insects are beginning to make its way around East Tennessee.

Fall armyworms are pests that eat agricultural items, but they mainly like to feast on one thing: grass.

Dr. Midhula Gireesh, a turf grass and ornamental pest specialist with the University of Tennessee, said these pests can be troublesome for homeowners.

“They can eat or chew up the foliage, and they really prefer grasses and even though they are also like known for being agricultural pests, crop pests, they can also be attacking your lawns,” Gireesh said.

Their name can be misleading. While they do come up primarily in the fall, they are not worms, but more like caterpillars that become moths. While they are young, they feast on grass and the older they get, the more they eat.

“As they grow bigger in size, like the later in stir caterpillars. They are like aggressive feeders, so if there is like a full armyworm, a numerous full armyworm for instance, then probably you can see your lawn turning brown in some time,” Gireesh said.

The invasion of fall armyworms is an annual thing. Each year, the population of these pests varies but they can still wreak havoc on farms, lawns and fields.

“Some years, so it can be like more population coming in versus other years. This year looks like it’s it’s going to be like you know more for armyworms,” Gireesh said.

These insects migrate from the south, whether that be Mexico, South America or Florida. They naturally move north but can also come up due to storms.

Locally, President of Wayne’s Pest Control Shawn Hollis said grasses and fields are being affected.

“We had kind of a wet summer here at the end, and we are starting to see some damage in lawns and even some hayfields. I know other fields have been affected so we;re starting to see quite a bit of uptick in activity,“ Hollis said.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal judicial panel has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Tennessee’s U.S. House maps and those for the state Senate amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

“In sum, the complaint alleges facts that are consistent with a racial gerrymander,” stated the ruling, which was issued Wednesday. “But the facts are also consistent with a political gerrymander.”

The complaint was the first court challenge over a 2022 congressional redistricting map that carved up Democratic-leaning Nashville to help Republicans flip a seat in last year’s elections, a move that critics claimed was done to dilute the power of Black voters and other communities of color in one of the state’s few Democratic strongholds.

The lawsuit also challenged state Senate District 31 in majority-Black Shelby County, including part of Memphis, using similar arguments and saying that the white voting age population went up under the new maps. A Republican now holds that seat.

However, the three federal judges who wrote the ruling argued there was another clear motivation behind Tennessee’s Republican state legislative supermajority by pointing to “naked partisanship” as the likely “straightforward explanation.”

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disputes over partisan gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts are none of its business, limiting those claims to state courts under their own constitutions and laws. Most recently, the high court upheld South Carolina’s congressional map in a 6-3 decision that said the state General Assembly did not use race to draw districts based on the 2020 Census.

In Tennessee’s case, the plaintiffs included the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, the African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee, the Equity Alliance, the League of Women Voters of Tennessee and several Tennessee voters, including former Democratic state Sen. Brenda Gilmore.

After Nashville was splintered into three congressional districts, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper of Nashville declined to seek reelection, claiming he couldn’t win under the new layout. Ultimately, Rep. John Rose won reelection by about 33 percentage points, Rep. Mark Green won another term by 22 points, and Rep. Andy Ogles won his first term by 13 points in the district vacated by Cooper.

Tennessee now has eight Republicans in the U.S. House, with just one Democrat left in Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen.

In the original complaint, the plaintiffs argued that all three of the “candidates of choice” for minority voters lost their congressional bids in the Nashville area in 2022.

The judges countered that the lawsuit had to “more than plausibly allege that Tennessee’s legislators knew that their Republican-friendly map would harm voters who preferred Democratic candidates—including the higher percentage of minority voters who preferred those candidates.”

The judges did reject Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s argument that the plaintiffs had waited too long to file their challenge and also declared that the plaintiffs did not have to come up with their own map in their legal challenge. In their dismissal, the judges said the complaint could be refiled over the next 30 days as long as it was amended to “plausibly disentangle race from politics.”

Republicans celebrated the ruling, with House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office issuing a statement saying they were “happy to have resolution on this matter so that we can focus on what’s ahead for Tennessee.”

Notably, the ruling briefly weighed in on ongoing controversies that have surrounded the Republican-dominant Statehouse, where Democrats have alleged racial discrimination in both the legislative policies enacted and actions that their GOP colleagues have taken recently.

Ranging from the brief expulsion of two young Black Democratic lawmakers to passing legislation aimed at slashing the left-leaning Nashville’s city council, the plaintiffs’ complaint provided several examples that they claimed as evidence of a “discriminatory motive.”

The court countered that the examples had “little to do with redistricting” but did note that they suggest the “possibility of misconduct.”

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s state legislative maps still face another lawsuit on state constitutional grounds.