Davey OBrien Semifinalists Announced Today

Plenty of football remains but awards, honors like the Davey O'Brien Award are already being decided.

Monday October 24th marks the announcement of the Davey O'Brien Award Semifinalists.

Look at several of the likely nominations.

Kellen Moore (Boise State)

Ryan Tannehill (Texas A&M)

Landry Jones (Oklahoma)

Russell Wilson (Wisconsin)

Brandon Weeden (Oklahoma State)

Robert Griffin III (Baylor)

Denard Robinson (Michigan)

The seven previous quarterbacks each won Davey O'Brien Quarterback of the Week honors this fall. In addition to the aforementioned players conventional wisdom has to include both Matt Barkley (USC) and Andrew Luck (Stanford).

Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson is also having a nice season.

Last season the semifinalist list had just three seniors (Andy Dalton, Ricky Stanzi, and Colin Kaepernick). Surely 2011 will feature more elder statesmen.

Touting Zach

As a reporter on UC athletics I routinely see Zach Collaros play. I rarely watch Big 12 quarterbacks. Players like Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, and Denard Robinson are very familiar to me. Take a look at some of the statistics put up by the Pride of Steubenville.

Collaros passed for 1576 yards, rushed for 225. He averages 257.3 yards per game.

Collaros has completed 64.0 % of his passes resulting in fourteen touchdowns. That excludes the six rushing TDs and one two-point conversion.

The senior is averaging two passing touchdowns versus BCS-opponents.

He has lifted his Bearcats over 500 yards of total offense thrice.

Only six quarterbacks have passed for more yards with fewer attempts. In other words most of the players leading Zach in passing are slinging it way more often.

Final Word

Frankly it will be difficult for Collaros to make the list for one major reason. Lack of exposure.

UC was on ESPN2 against Tennessee and ESPN whilst facing N.C. State. Most of the voters for this award live in the Texas/Oklahoma region of the country and it seems very unlikely they check out the BIG EAST Network.

The one statistic that truly defines the quality of a quarterback is wins. Does he win?

Collaros satisfies this requirement. Saturday he picked up his sixth win of the season. The only quarterbacks with more wins are Jarrett Lee (LSU), AJ McCarron (Bama), Wilson (Arkansas), Moore (Boise), Luck (Stanford), Tahj Boyd (Clemson), Collin Klein (Kansas State), Logan Thomas (Va Tech) and Case Keenum (Houston).

With his unwavering commitment to the program, to his second head coach, and to the city Zach Collaros continues to give UC much to be proud of.

It would be nice for him to get some external recognition.