Watch Lists Galore

With football season a little over a month away, it's the time of year again when watch lists for all of the college football awards start coming out.

Each list features prominent names (Jameis Winston, Bryce Petty, Marcus Mariota, etc.) and, well, less prominent names (Old Dominion's Antonio Vaughan, UAB's Hunter Mullins, etc.).

I find the sheer volume of names on the list to be borderline ridiculous. For example, the Rimington Trophy (best center) watch list initially included 64 players. Idaho's Mike Marboe and UTSA's Nate Leonard were added to the list Tuesday, bringing the total to 66 players. (yes, Idaho and UTSA play at the FBS level, in the Mountain Belt of America Conference, or something like that).

With 128 schools playing at the FBS level in 2014, that means 51.6 percent of schools have their center on the watch list. Sure, the Nagurski Trophy (best defensive player) watch list included more players (81), but that is choosing from a field of more than 1,408 players (11 defensive players x 128 schools).

There is only one center on the field at a time.

Here are some more interesting stats I found while looking at the 10* watch lists that have been released so far.

• Of the 128 FBS schools, only 15 do not have at least one player on a single watch list.
• Those schools are: Appalachian State, Ball State, Buffalo, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Massachusetts, Miami (OH), Oklahoma State, Southern Miss, Texas State, Troy, Wake Forest, Washington State and Wyoming.
• Of the 70 teams that play in one of the six power conferences (American, ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-12 and SEC), only three do not have at least one player on a single watch list.
• Those schools are: Oklahoma State (Big XII), Wake Forest (ACC) and Washington State (Pac-12).
• There are 46 schools with at least five watch list appearances. (If a player is on multiple watch lists, he is counted for each watch list he is on. For example, Arkansas' Trey Flowers is on the Bednarik Award and Nagurski Trophy watch lists, while Alex Collins, Hunter Henry, Sam Irwin-Hill and Jonathan Williams are each on only one watch list. There are five different players, but Arkansas has six watch list appearances.)
• Only four of those teams had a losing record in 2013.
• Arkansas: six appearances, 3-9 record
• Florida: eight appearances, 4-8 record
• Northwestern: five appearances, 5-7 record
• TCU: 11 appearances, 4-8 record
• There are 13 schools with at least 10 watch list appearances.
• TCU is the only one of those teams that had a losing record in 2013.
• The other 12 schools had a combined winning percentage of .789 in 2013.
• Only three schools, other than TCU, failed to win at least 10 games last season (Georgia, Texas and Washington).
• Alabama (not surprisingly) leads the country with 17 watch list appearances.
• Here's the top 13...
• Alabama: 17
• Florida State: 16
• Michigan State: 16
• Stanford: 16
• Oregon: 14
• USC: 14
• Duke: 13
• Oklahoma: 13
• Texas: 12
• Georgia: 11
• TCU: 11
• Washington: 11
• Baylor: 10

*For my stats, I included the Paul Hornung Award watch list that was released Monday but for some reason isn't usually included in lists of college football awards. Other watch lists released last week were the Maxwell Award, Bednarik Award, Mackey Award, Rimington Trophy, Lou Groza Award, Ray Guy Award, Nagurski Trophy, Outland Trophy and Jim Thorpe Award.