The 2012 preseason watch lists are starting to come out and the first is the Rimington Award which is given out to the nation's top center. There are 50 players who made the initial list and five of those players come from the Mountain West:
• Nick Carlson, Wyoming
• Dillon Farrell, New Mexico
• Alec Johnson, San Diego State
• Weston Richburg, Colorado State
• Robert Waterman, UNLV
Out of these lineman, three were named to the All-Mountain West second team in Carlson, Johnson and Richburg. We know these five lineman can play, but the odds of them winning the award is very slim. Over the past 10 years only one player form a non-BCS league won the award and that was in 2010 when TCU's Jake Kirkpatrick.
Michael Felder of Your Best 11 actually breaks down which candidates have a shot at wining the award, and he breaks it down to five players. First here is how he got there:
In the last 10 years, the Rimington Award has been dominated by the SEC and the Big Ten. Seven out of the last 10 are from those two conferences, with the SEC getting three winners and the Big Ten leading the nation with four award winners.
That leaves 14 players on the list-the guys from the Big Ten and the SEC. In looking at the last decade of award winners, the average regular season win total was 9.8-just under 10 wins a season.
Given the struggles and transition at Iowa, Auburn, Texas A&M, Florida and Penn State, odds are that those teams won't hit the must-have nine-plus win plateau.That leaves five guys on the list: Travis Frederick of Wisconsin, T.J. Johnson of South Carolina, Barrett Jones of Alabama, P.J. Lonergan of LSU and Travis Swanson of Arkansas.
A look at the last five years of award winners shows that not only does the win total increase to almost 11 games (10.6), but four of the last five winners had teams that participated in a BCS bowl. All of these teams can get to a BCS bowl. However, Arkansas and South Carolina are the least likely participants out of the five listed.
In addition to participating in a BCS bowl, the winner of the Rimington Trophy in the last decade has never participated in the BCS championship game.
Some interesting tidbits there, so based on that the odds of a Mountain West player winning the award is extremely slim when going by the last decades worth of data.
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