Ever Feel Like Somebody Is Watching You?

QB John David Booty and DE Lawrence Jackson have been named to the watch list for the 2007 Walter Camp Award, which honors the player of the year. They are among 35 candidates to be recognized.

Yesterday, Booty was also announced as a candidate for the Davey O'Brien National Quarterback Award. He would be the first Trojan to win the trophy (not even Carson Palmer or Matt Leinart took home the hardware). Earlier this month he made the watch list for the Manning Award.

Booty joins familiar names on the O'Brien list including Colt McCoy (Texas), Colt Brennan (Hawaii), Brian Brohm (Louisville), and Nate Longshore (Cal). He also joins some unfamiliar unpronounceable ones, such as Omar Haugabook (Troy), Dan LeFevour (Central Michigan), Kinsmon Lancaster (UL-Monroe) and Julian Edelman (Kent State). Like the Manning and the Camp, the O'Brien watch list includes 35 college players. Keep in mind that many teams lost starting QBs to graduation since last year. You do the math. With 119 teams in Division 1A, subtract graduated signal callers, divide 35 by that number, carry the one, and you get ... a low threshold. We'll make a rough guess of 50%.

This raises the question -- why have watch lists in the first place?

The hoopla may seem particularly frivolous in the preseason (last year's Butkus list had 66 linebackers), but at least it gives voters something to work with. It can't be easy trying to sort through the names of thousands of college athletes.

This year the Thorpe Award has 34 DBs on their radar. The Maxwell Award is directing voters to look at 64 candidates. The Nagurski list has 55 players, but reminds us that "players may be added or deleted from the list before or during the season." Nice of them to be flexible.

If you through Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart risked splitting votes for the Heisman a couple years ago, look at this year's Lombardi candidates. Four Trojans are among 43 linemen on the list. 

According to Danielle Moorman, Executive Director of the Davey O'Brien Foundation, the lists do help. "We want our selection committee to look at quarterbacks from all 119 schools," she acknowledged (to that end they allow write-in candidates). "This just kind of earmarks them." When asked if 35 is a magic number for watch lists this year, she pointed out that O'Brien's is based on preseason media All-Americans and does not have any quota.

...

In "Where Are They Now?" news, former Trojan Rocky Hinds made the O'Brien list. After coming in with a laundry list of prep honors, he redshirted as a Freshman at USC in 2004. He transfered to the UNLV Rebels in 2005 and started 11 games for them last season, passing for 2,148 yards. Due to injury, his school bio lists him as co-starter with Travis Dixon (who didn't make the list).

Comments

[Ralphus]

What, no live blogging from the USC scrimmage on Wednesday night? What up with that?

[Adam Rose]

Sorry, Ralphus ... I won't rule it out for the future but at the moment I do not have plans for live blogging. Is there anything you would want to see live blogging from? Between all the online game trackers (not to mention just watching it on TV or in person), I'm not sure if it would be that helpful during games -- but I could be wrong.

[Bill Sellers]

What do you think is the best way to select a preseason Watch List? I am not sure if they mean too much but it seems like The O'Brien is at least making the effort to keep it scientific in the process. Thoughts?