As Stanford Cardinal-transfers, the Michigan Wolverines have an opportunity to win the Rimington Award, which is given to the nation’s best center, for the second consecutive season. Officially, Drake Nugent is now listed as a finalist. Olusegun Oluwatimi, the center for the 2022 Wolverines, won the trophy in the previous year, making this the second time a team has won the trophy in a row since the competition’s start in 2000. Michigan will hold the record for the most Rimington awards in school history if Nugent is successful in bringing the trophy back to Ann Arbor this year.
The Dave Rimington Trophy, named for the legendary center Dave Rimington of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, is awarded to a center if it is concluded that, among the three teams that already have an All-America roster, the center in question is the consensus All-American center. Jackson Powers-Johnson of the Oregon Ducks and Sedrick Van Pran of the Georgia Bulldogs are the other finalists for this year’s award.
With just five sacks allowed this season, Powers-Johnson leads a Ducks team that has given up the fewest sacks in the country. The Outland Trophy is awarded to the top interior lineman in college football, and he is the only center who is also a finalist for the award. As the captain of a Bulldogs squad that just missed the College Football Playoffs, Van Pran has led Georgia’s best offensive attack to school records in yards per play and yards per game. The team has also established records for total yards scored.
Nugent, a center for the Wolverines, is the foundation of a team that has developed one of the best rushing attacks in the country. The Joe Moore Award, which is given to the nation’s best offensive line unit, has the Michigan squad as a finalist. The Wolverines will aim to maintain their ground-game dominance in the postseason despite losing right guard Zak Zinter, a crucial member of the team, during their game against the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Star running back Blake Corum, who led the nation in scoring with 144 points and set a record with 24 rushing touchdowns—enough to make him the leader in all non-passing touchdowns—outlined the nearly unstoppable rushing attack. As Michigan scored multiple rushing touchdowns in all but one of the games with Nugent in the starting lineup, Corum was the only FBS player to score a touchdown in every game this season. He only had four games in which he scored just one touchdown. In the Big Ten Championship game against the Iowa Hawkeyes, one of the nation’s most tenacious run defenses, the feature back surpassed 1000 yards for the season.
