KNOXVILLE -- Another day, another preseason watch list for Vols QB Tyler Bray. On Friday, he was named to the Walter Camp Football Foundation Player of the Year Watch List.
On Wednesday, he was named to the Davey O'Brien National Quarterback of the Year Award Watch List. He is also on the Manning Award Watch List and Maxwell Award Watch List.
The Walter Camp Football Foundation announced the names of 50 "players to watch" for its 2012 Player of the Year award, the nation's fourth-oldest individual college football accolade.
The 2011 Walter Camp Player of the Year recipient was former Stanford and current Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck.
"We are proud to continue the great work of Walter Camp and recognize the best college football players in the nation," Foundation president John Marks said. "This watch list is a great start to what is shaping up to be another exciting year of college football."
The watch list will be narrowed to 10 semi-finalists in mid-November. The 2012 Walter Camp Player of the Year recipient, which is voted on by the 124 NCAA Bowl Subdivision head coaches and sports information directors, will be announced live on ESPN SportsCenter on Thursday, December 6. The winner will then receive his trophy at the Foundation's annual national awards banquet on January 12, 2013 at the Yale University Commons in New Haven.
A native of Kingsburg, Calif., Bray has played in 16 games for the Vols in his career, including 12 starts, and already ranks among the school's career passing leaders in touchdowns (7th, 35), completions (10th, 272), and yards (3,832). He has completed 272 of 471 passing attempts for his career (57.7%), and in 2011, he completed 147-of-247 passes for 1,983 yards, 17 touchdowns, and six interceptions, averaging 283.3 passing yards per game. Bray is 8-4 in his career as a starter and owns the UT records for consecutive games with multiple touchdown passes (10) and most passing yards in the first four games of a season (1,328).
(E-mail Stan Crawley at wscrawley@earthlink.net)