DALLAS — Penn State sophomore running back Saquon Barkley and Pitt junior running back James Conner are both candidates on the 2016 Doak Walker Award preseason watch list for the nation’s premier running back.
(Photo of Penn State’s Saquon Barkley. Photo by Paul Burdick. Check out more of Burdick’s work here)
Barkley, who is also on the Maxwell Award watch list for the National Player of the Year, is coming off a fantastic freshman season that saw him rush for a Penn State freshman record 1,076 yards, the 16th-best single-season total in school history. He scored seven rushing touchdowns — eight overall — to tie D.J. Dozier (1983) for the schools’ freshman rushing touchdown record and had five 100-yard rushing games to equal Dozier’s school mark — Dozier was the previous single-season record holder with 1,002 yards.
For his efforts, Barkley was named All-Big Ten second team, Freshman All-America by Football Writers Association of America (FWAA), Sporting News and USA Today, ECAC Rookie of the Year and Big Ten Freshman of the Year by the Big Ten Network.
Conner, a 2014 semifinalist for the Walker Award when he was the ACC Player of the Year, was also on the preseason watch list for the award in 2014 and 2015. He missed nearly the entire 2015 season after suffering an MCL tear in Pitt’s opener against Youngstown State before being diagnosed with cancer later in the fall.
With 2,641 career rushing yards and 36 touchdowns already to his name, Conner begins his comeback campaign as one of college football’s most decorated returnees while he is also poised to move up in the top 10 in Pitt history in career rushing yardage and scoring. A native of Erie, Pa., the 6-foot-2, 235-pound Conner currently holds 10th in school history for rushing and sits sixth in the Pitt record books for scoring, tied with former Panther running back greats LeSean McCoy and Ray Graham with 216 points.
The Doak Walker Award was created in 1989 to recognize the nation’s premier running back for his accomplishments on the field, achievement in the classroom and citizenship in the community. It is the only major collegiate football award that requires all candidates to be on schedule to graduate within one year of other students of the same classification. The award is presented annually by the SMU Athletic Forum. Ten Semifinalists for the award will be announced in late November before the three finalists and eventual winner are presented in early December.
Penn State’s lone Doak Walker Award winner was Larry Johnson in 2002. Ki-Jana Carter and Curtis Enis were finalists for the award in 1994 and 1997, respectively.
Pitt has never had a Doak Walker Award winner.
Alabama’s Derek Henry won the 2015 award.
