Special Teams Player of The Year
The Special Teams Player of the Year award is given to the player voted best on special teams. The recipient can either be a placekicker, punter, returner, or a position known as a gunner. The first winner was Kevin Williams, a returner from Miami. Andy Lee, a Pittsburgh punter, and Cincinnati kick returner Mardy Gilyard are the only players to receive the award more than once.
There have been 24 recipients, with ties in 2002 and 2003. Of the award recipients, 12 have been seniors, nine juniors, and three sophomores. Three placekickers have won the award, most recently Virginia Tech's Shayne Graham in 1999. Todd Sauerbrun was the first punter to win after he was a unanimous selection in 1994.
Notably, Temple players received both the Special Teams Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year (see below) awards in 2012, the first year of the Owls' current Big East tenure. During Temple's previous tenure in Big East football from 1991 to 2004, the Owls received only one conference award.
Read more about this topic: Big East Conference Football Awards
Famous quotes containing the words special, teams, player and/or year:
“Those of us who are in this world to educate—to care for—young children have a special calling: a calling that has very little to do with the collection of expensive possessions but has a lot to do with the worth inside of heads and hearts. In fact, that’s our domain: the heads and hearts of the next generation, the thoughts and feelings of the future.”
—Fred M. Rogers, U.S. writer and host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. “That Which is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye,” Young Children (July 1994)
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“‘He hardly drinks a pint of wine,
And that, I doubt, is no good sign.
His stomach too begins to fail:
Last year we thought him strong and hale,
But now, he’s quite another thing;
I wish he may hold out till spring.’
Then hug themselves, and reason thus;
‘It is not yet so bad with us.’”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)