I completed my voting for the national awards yesterday. You can vote for up to five people in each category: (Payton, Buchanan, Robinson and Rice awards). Justin Arias got my top vote for the Payton Award, followed by DeAndre Carter of Sac State and Vernon Adams of EWU. Mike Kramer got my top vote for the Robinson Award. And I placed Mario Jenkins No. 5 on my ballot for the Rice Award. No Bengals were nominated for the Buchanan Award.
Should be fun to see how these all turn out. I'm pretty confident Arias will finish as a Payton finalist. The Robinson Award is such a crap shoot, there are 20 really good candidates and it's so hard to differentiate between the various coaches. I hope Mario gets into the finals for the Rice Award, but even if he doesn't, the fact that he was nominated and will be getting votes increases his profile for next year. He'll be on a lot of pre-season All-American and all-conference teams.
Xavier Finney, although he didn't get nominated for the Payton Award, surely should start next year on the watch list, and should be a pre-season All-American. Madison Mangum should also be a pre-season All-American, and may start the year on the Payton Award watch list. And depending on how the Big Sky awards go (the all-conference teams will be announced today, Coach of the Year tomorrow), some Bengal offensive linemen might well be on pre-season All-America lists next season. Any positive publicity for Bengal players and coaches is good for the program.