LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Penn State\u2019s Larry Johnson ran away with the Maxwell and Doak Walker awards Thursday night during the college football awards show.
\nThe senior tailback won the Maxwell as the nation\u2019s best all-around player and the Doak Walker as the nation\u2019s top running back. Johnson, a Heisman Trophy finalist, ran for 2,015 yards to become the ninth major college player to run for 2,000 yards in a season.
\nThe 6-foot-2, 222-pound Johnson beat out fellow Heisman finalists Ken Dorsey of Miami and Brad Banks of Iowa for the Maxwell. Dorsey, who led Miami to a second straight perfect regular season and a spot in the BCS national title game, was last year\u2019s winner.
\nThe Heisman, college football\u2019s top individual award, will be presented Saturday night in New York. Southern California\u2019s Carson Palmer and Miami\u2019s Willis McGahee are the other finalists.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s really great to be player of the year, but somehow I feel like I\u2019ve been fattened up for New York,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI think I\u2019ve won all the awards I\u2019m going to win. I think the Heisman is going to go to somebody else, but I still feel great about everything I won tonight.\u201d
\nJohnson won the Doak Walker over McGahee and Colorado\u2019s Chris Brown.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to narrow down who\u2019s the greatest running back in the country right now,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAll those guys are great. Give them two or three more games and they\u2019re right there with me. My trophy case is mostly footballs. This will be the first big trophy for me.\u201d
\nBefore the awards show, Johnson received the Walter Camp Award as the nation\u2019s top college player.
\nWhether winning all the honors makes Johnson the favorite for the Heisman remains to be seen. Banks was the only other Heisman finalist to pick up an award Thursday, winning the Davey O\u2019Brien quarterback award over Dorsey and Palmer.
\nBanks, who didn\u2019t start a Division I-A game until this season, was the nation\u2019s pass efficiency leader, throwing for 2,369 yards with 25 touchdowns and just four interceptions. He also ran for 387 yards and five scores.
\nThe last two O\u2019Brien winners went on to win the Heisman \u2014 Nebraska\u2019s Eric Crouch last year, and Florida State\u2019s Chris Weinke in 2000.
\n\u201cThis is so wild, I feel like I\u2019m in a dream,\u201d said Banks, who was chosen The Associated Press College Player of the Year on Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s like I came out from under a rock or something.\u201d
\nMaryland linebacker E.J. Henderson, the Terrapins\u2019 leading tackler for a third straight season, won the Chuck Bednarik Trophy as the nation\u2019s best defensive player.
\nHenderson, who helped Maryland to a second straight 10-win season with 163 tackles, won the trophy over ends Terrell Suggs of Arizona State and Tommie Harris of Oklahoma.
\n\u201cThis is really a great honor to beat out some of the great defensive players in the country,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cTo beat guys like Terrell Suggs and Tommie Harris is really something.\u201d
\nWashington State defensive tackle Rien Long, who helped the Cougars earn a spot in the Rose Bowl, won the Outland Trophy as the nation\u2019s top interior lineman on Thursday night.
\nLong, a 6-foot-6, 286-pound junior, had 13 sacks this season and won the award over Miami center Brett Romberg and Utah offensive tackle Jordan Gross.
\n\u201cI\u2019m still waiting for my legs to come back,\u201d Long said. \u201cI\u2019m kind of blown away. I try not to think about awards, but when you win a lot of games, it\u2019s one of the products of winning. You hear a lot about the East Coast-West Coast bias. I guess my production was judged by the unbiased people as being pretty good.\u201d
\nMichigan State\u2019s Charles Rogers won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation\u2019s top receiver.
\nRogers, who caught a school-record 68 passes for 1,351 yards and 13 touchdowns, won the award over Nevada\u2019s Nate Burleson and Arizona State\u2019s Shaun McDonald. The 6-foot-4, 205-pound junior, will skip his senior season to enter the NFL draft.
\n\u201cTo start the season as a favorite for an award and win it is really amazing,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cIt was hard, really hard, because everybody knows you\u2019re up for awards and so they\u2019re playing hard against you and you have to work that much harder.\u201d
\nKansas State cornerback Terence Newman won the Thorpe Award given to the nation\u2019s top defensive back over Ohio State\u2019s Mike Doss and Southern California\u2019s Troy Polamalu.
\n\u201cOur team finished really strong, and I did, too,\u201d Newman said. \u201cYou never go into a season expecting to win an award, so to be recognized as the best is really incredible.\u201d
\nColorado\u2019s Mark Mariscal won the Ray Guy Award as the nation\u2019s top punter over Tennessee\u2019s Dustin Colquitt and Kentucky\u2019s Glenn Pakulak.
\nIowa\u2019s Nate Kaeding won the Lou Groza Award given annually to the nation\u2019s top kicker over Mike Nugent of Ohio State and Jared Siegel of Oregon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Penn State\u2019s Larry Johnson ran away with the Maxwell and Doak Walker awards Thursday night during the college football awards show. The senior tailback won the Maxwell as the nation\u2019s best all-around player and the Doak Walker as the nation\u2019s top running back. Johnson, a Heisman Trophy finalist, ran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}