Oklahoma football: Sooners named to two more award watch lists
By Chip Rouse
Add offensive linemen Bobby Evans, Ben Powers and Dru Samia to the list of Oklahoma football players who are on 2018 preseason watch lists for national awards.
All three have been named to the preseason watch list for the Outland Trophy, which is awarded every season to the best interior lineman in college football.
Powers, a senior, and Evans, a redshirt junior, have started a combined 46 games over the past two seasons, and Samia, a senior, has started 34 games over the past three seasons.
Samia is the most experienced of the three returning Sooner linemen, but offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh calls Powers the most consistent performer.
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The three Sooner offensive linemen, holdovers from one of college football’s best offensive lines in 2017, are among 82 candidates on the preseason watch list for the 2018 Outland Trophy.
Ed Oliver, a junior from Houston, was the winner of the 2017 Outland Trophy and is on the preseason watch list bidding to be a repeat winner.
Eleven players from the Big 12 are preseason candidates for this season’s Outland Trophy. The Sooners placed three on the list, one more than the cellar-dwelling Kansas Jayhawks.
The Outland Trophy, which is voted on by the Football Writers Association of America, was first presented in 1946. Three Oklahoma Sooners have won the award in the past: offensive tackle Jim Weatherall in 1951, defensive tackle Lee Roy Selmon in 1975, center/offensive guard Greg Roberts in 1978 and offensive tackle Jammal Brown in 2004.
OU junior linebacker Caleb Kelly is one of four Big 12 linebackers named to the preseason watch list for the Butkus Award, the individual award presented to the most outstanding linebacker at three levels of football: college, professional and high school. Fifty-one college players are preseason candidates for this national award, which mirrors the jersey number of Dick Butkus, the NFL Hall of Fame player for whom the award is named.
Three former Sooners — Brian Bosworth, Rocky Calmus and Teddy Lehman — are previous winners of the Butkus Award. Bosworth was a two-time winner, in 1985-86.