COLUMBIA, SC -
The Walter Camp Football Foundation has announced the names of forty "players to watch" for its 2011 Player of the Year award, the nation's fourth-oldest individual college football accolade.
The University of South Carolina has two players on the list - sophomore running back Marcus Lattimore and junior wide receiver Alshon Jeffery. Both players earned spots on the Walter Camp second-team All-America squad last season.
"We are proud to continue the great work of Walter Camp and recognize the best college football players in the nation," Foundation president John Marks said. "This watch list is a great start to what is shaping up to be another exciting year of college football."
The watch list will be narrowed to 10 semi-finalists in mid-November. The 2011 Walter Camp Player of the Year recipient, which is voted on by the 120 NCAA Bowl Subdivision head coaches and sports information directors, will be announced live on ESPN SportsCenter on Thursday, December 8. The winner will then receive his trophy at the Foundation's annual national awards banquet on January 14, 2012 at the Yale University Commons in New Haven.
Walter Camp, "The Father of American football," first selected an All-America team in 1889. Camp – a former Yale University athlete and football coach – is also credited with developing play from scrimmage, set plays, the numerical assessment of goals and tries and the restriction of play to eleven men per side. The Walter Camp Football Foundation (www.waltercamp.org) – a New Haven-based all-volunteer group – was founded in 1967 to perpetuate the ideals of Camp and to continue the tradition of selecting annually an All-America team.
The Walter Camp Football Foundation is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA). The NCFAA was founded in 1997 as a coalition of the major collegiate football awards to protect, preserve and enhance the integrity, influence and prestige of the game's predominant awards. The NCFAA encourages professionalism and the highest standards for the administration of its member awards and the selection of their candidates and recipients. For more information, visit the association's website, www.ncfaa.org
The members of the NCFAA are unveiling their preseason watch lists over a 13-day period this month. Fifteen of the association's 21 awards select a preseason watch list and this is the first time the NCFAA spearheaded a coordinated effort to promote each award's preseason candidates.
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