Watch Lists Update

Last week, I did a blog post about the many players named to watch lists between July 7 and July 11. Here's an update that I think you might find interesting now that all 16 watch lists have been announced (the final one came out Friday).

My favorite watch list is probably the Lombardi Award watch list, which features 123 players. Believe it or not, the list will actually be updated before the season starts to include other players that receive "significant pre-season honors."

My advice: Put your game film together and send it in. You might get named to the updated watch list!

Here are the final stats from the 16* watch lists.

• Of the 128 FBS schools, only seven do not have at least one player on a single watch list.
• Those schools are: Buffalo, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Massachusetts, Miami (OH), Southern Miss and Wake Forest
• That means 94.5 percent of all FBS schools had at least one player on a watch list.
• Georgia Southern is playing its first season at the FBS level in 2014, while Georgia State will be playing its second FBS season (and fifth season ever after being founded in 2010). Massachusetts did not join the FBS ranks until 2011.
• Wake Forest is the only school from a major conference (ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-12 and SEC) without at least one player on a single watch list.
• Here's a list of schools in major conferences that had three or fewer watch list appearances (each time a player is on a different watch list, it counts as one - for example: Arkansas Trey Flowers is on three watch lists, so he counts as three)...
• Wake Forest (ACC): 0
• Oklahoma State (Big XII): 1
• Washington State (Pac-12): 1
• Boston College (ACC): 2
• Colorado (Pac-12): 2
• Georgia Tech (ACC): 2
• Purdue (Big Ten): 2
• Vanderbilt (SEC): 2
• Illinois (Big Ten): 3
• Kentucky (SEC): 3
• North Carolina State (ACC): 3
• Alabama led all teams with 27 watch list appearances. Here's a list of all schools with at least 15 appearances on watch lists…
• Alabama (SEC): 27
• Stanford (Pac-12): 26
• Florida State (ACC): 25
• USC (Pac-12): 24
• Oregon (Pac-12): 23
• Michigan State (Big Ten): 21
• Georgia (SEC): 20
• Texas (Big XII): 20
• Baylor (Big XII): 19
• Duke (ACC): 19
• Oklahoma (Big XII): 18
• TCU (Big XII): 16
• UCLA (Pac-12): 16
• Kansas State (Big XII): 15
• Notre Dame (Ind.): 15
• Ohio State (Big Ten): 15
• Washington (Pac-12): 15
• Of the 17 teams that had 15 or more watch list appearances, only TCU (4-8) had a losing record in 2013. Only six did not win at least 10 games last season.
• Those teams are: TCU (4), Georgia (8), Kansas State (8), Texas (8), Notre Dame (9) and Washington (9)
• Arkansas was one of 37 teams that had at least 10 watch list appearances. Of those 37 teams, three had losing records in 2013.
• Those teams are: Arkansas (3-9), Florida (4-8) and TCU (4-8)
• The SEC had the most watch list appearances, with 146. Here's how many all conferences had…
• SEC: 146
• Pac-12: 144
• Big Ten: 118
• ACC: 117
• Big XII: 111
• MWC: 65
• American: 62
• C-USA: 47
• Independents: 37
• MAC: 33
• Sun Belt: 33
• However, if you factor in the fact that the SEC has 14 teams and the Pac-12 has 12 teams, the Pac-12 has more watch list appearances per team…
• Pac-12: 12 (12 teams)
• Big XII: 11.1 (10 teams)
• SEC: 10.34 (14 teams)
• Big Ten: 8.43 (14 teams)
• ACC: 8.36 (14 teams)
• American: 5.64 (11 teams)
• MWC: 5.42 (12 teams)
• C-USA: 3.62 (13 teams)
• Sun Belt: 3 (11 teams)
• MAC: 2.54 (12 teams)

*The 16 watch lists I used for these stats are: Paul Hornung Award, Maxwell Award, Bednarik Award, Mackey Award, Rimington Trophy, Lou Groza Award, Ray Guy Award, Nagurski Trophy, Outland Trohpy, Jim Thorpe Award, Butkus Award, Lombardi Award, Biletnikoff Award, Davey O'Brien Award, Doak Walker Award and Walter Camp Award.