Northwestern University Athletics
Ben Burkett Named to Rimington Trophy Watch List
5/20/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
May 20, 2009
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern center Ben Burkett (Toledo, Ohio/St. John's Jesuit), a redshirt sophomore, is one of 44 players who has been named to the Rimington Trophy Watch List for the upcoming 2009 season. The award honors the nation's top center.
Burkett started all 13 games for last year's Wildcat team, which finished the season 9-4 and played in the Valero Alamo Bowl. He was named a Phil Steele's third-team All-Freshman selection as well as an ESPN.com first-team All-Big Ten Freshman team honoree. Burkett also was tabbed Northwestern's NGN Offensive Newcomer of the Year recipient.
The 10-year-old trophy is presented by the Boomer Esiason Foundation. Past recipients include Nebraska's Dominic Raiola, Ohio State's LeCharles Bentley, Miami's Brett Romberg, Virginia Tech's Jake Grove, co-winners Michigan 's David Baas and LSU's Ben Wilkerson, Minnesota's Greg Eslinger, West Virginia's Dan Mozes, Arkansas' Jonathan Luigs and Penn State's A.Q. Shipley. Since its inception the Rimington Trophy Award has raised over $1.3 million for the award's benefactor, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which is hosted by the Boomer Esiason Foundation that to date has raised over $73 milllion for CF Research.
Rimington, the award's namesake, was a consensus first-team All-America center at Nebraska in 1981 and 1982, during which time he became the John Outland Trophy's only double winner as the nation's finest college interior lineman.
