LOGAN, Utah – For the third-straight year, Utah State offensive center Tyler Larsen has been named to the Dave Rimington Trophy Spring Watch List, it was recently announced. The Rimington Trophy is given annually to the nation’s most outstanding center in college football. Larsen is one of 44 players on the 2013 Watch List and one of 17 returning players.
The winner will be honored at the Rimington Trophy Presentation banquet at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln, Neb., on January 11, 2014.
Larsen, a 6-foot-4, 312-pounder from Salt Lake City, Utah (Jordan HS), enters his senior season having started 38 consecutive games, which is the longest active streak on the team. Larsen is a two-time first-team all-Western Athletic Conference honoree and the first offensive lineman to accomplish that feat since Mauricio Jourdan earned back-to-back Big West Conference first-team honors in 1996 and 1997.
During the 2012 season, Larsen anchored an offensive line that helped USU establish school records for total points (454), total offense (6,108), completions (285), completion percentage (.679), total yards per game (469.8) and total yards per attempt (6.83), while ranking second in points per game (34.9), total passing yards (3,445), first downs (272) and touchdowns (59).
Larsen, who is the only player from the state of Utah to make the Rimington Trophy Spring Watch List, is one of six Mountain West players recognized including Ben Clarke (Hawai’i), Dillon Farrell (New Mexico), Matt Galas (Nevada), Weston Richburg (Colorado State) and Robert Waterman (UNLV). Those six players from the MW are the second-most of any Football Bowl Subdivision Conference, trailing only the Southeastern Conference that had nine players among the list.
Utah State returns 49 lettermen and 18 starters from its most successful team in school history as USU ended the 2012 season with a school-best 11-2 record as it set school records for wins (11) and home wins (6), while recording just its second bowl win in school history with a 41-15 victory against Toledo in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. USU also won its first outright conference championship since 1936, as it went 6-0 in the Western Athletic Conference, and its third in school history.
Utah State will open the 2013 season Thursday, Aug. 29, at Utah and play its first Mountain West game the following weekend at Air Force on Saturday, Sept. 7. USU's first home game of the 2013 campaign will be Saturday, Sept. 14, against Weber State, while its first home Mountain West game will be Saturday, Oct. 12, against Boise State.
About the Rimington Trophy
The Rimington Trophy is presented annually to the Most Outstanding Center in NCAA Division I-A College Football. Since its inception, the Rimington Trophy has raised over $2 million. The 14-year-old award is overseen by the Boomer Esiason Foundation, which is committed to finding a cure for cystic fibrosis and has raised over $100 million for CF Research.
Dave Rimington, the award's namesake, was a consensus first-team All-America center at the University of Nebraska in 1981 and 1982, during which time he became the John Outland Trophy's only double winner as the nation's finest college interior lineman.
About the NCFAA
The Rimington Trophy is a member of the National College Football Awards Association. 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 official website.
Doug Hoffman is the assistant athletic director for Utah State University Athletic Media Relations.