Evan Royster Will Be A Doak Walker Candidate

Evan Royster

When the candidates for the Doak Walker Award were announced yesterday I was pretty shocked that Penn State’s Evan Royster wasn’t on the list.  While John Clay, Dan Herron and Brandon Minor are all backs deserving of the chance, Royster has outplayed all of them in his Big Ten career.

Now I know that I wasn’t the only one who was wondering where Royster’s name was on the list, as I was joined by thousands of Penn State fans and ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg.  Well, thankfully, Jeff Lockhart — the manager of athletic forum and programs for the Guaranty Bank SMU Athletic Forum who give out the award — was nice enough to send Rittenberg an email explaining what was going on.

Lockhart explained that a nomination issue prevented Royster from being included on the watch list, an omission that surprised many, including myself.

The release date for the watch list was moved up three weeks this year, and Penn State didn’t nominate Royster in time. Lockhart said an e-mail for nominations was sent to schools on July 2 and a call was placed to Penn State last week.

“Evan Royster is most definitely one of the most productive running backs returning to college this season, and we fully expect him to be an official candidate for the award,” Lockhart wrote in an e-mail to ESPN.com. “Evan not being on the preseason list in no way effects his chances of winning the Doak Walker Award, and since he was a 2008 semifinalist for the award we fully expect him to be in the running again this year. We will gladly add him once he is nominated. Universities are allowed to nominate candidates through October.”

Well, good.  That’s all settled now.

Also, as Rittenberg pointed out in his post on this, last year’s winner was Iowa’s Shonn Greene.  He didn’t appear on the preseason list either.  So maybe that’s the secret to winning it.