Jake Smith Named FWAA Freshman All-American, Bridgewater Snubbed

Not sure how Teddy wins so many national frosh of the year awards and gets snubbed here.

on whoever snubbed teddy for this oregon state fool!

2011 FWAA FRESHMAN ALL-AMERICA COMMITTEE
Marc Anderson - Las Vegas Review Journal - Mountain West
Marc Blaudschun - Boston Globe - ACC
Mike Griffith - Knoxville News Sentinel - SEC
Blair Kerkhoff - Kansas City Star - Big 12
Paul Letlow - Scout.Com - Sun Belt
Phil Miller - Minneapolis Star Tribune - Big Ten
Brian Murphy Idaho – Statesman - WAC
George Schroeder - Eugene Register-Guard - Pac-12
Phil Stukenborg - Memphis Commercial Appeal - Conference USA
Tom Luicci - Newark Star-Ledger - Big East
Doug Zaleski - Muncie Star Press - MAC

Note that the Big East is represented by a New Jersey writer. Do you think a closet Rutgers fan is going to give Bridgewater any love? I doubt Teddy got any recognition from his home conference rep. Sad.

Then look at the PAC-12 representative – Eugene, OREGON. OK, it’s not Corvallis, but I think you see where I’m going here. Pure homerism that flies in the face of not only statistical results, but common sense.

Get e’m outta my sight.

Without his excellent freshman year, no way our season plays out the way it does.

Teddy not being on the list is dumb; simply a better player, better stats and a bigger influence on a more successful team.

Would have put Louisville as the only team that had 2 true freshman on the list. (Kansas St. and USC both have two players on the list, but for both teams only one was a true freshman.)

otherwise I would have choice words for these writers.

Jake’s actually a RS freshman, but no matter.

I think the bigger story for Jake Smith is that he came to UofL as someone who wasn’t expected to ever win an award like this. We all knew Teddy was a stud when he stepped on campus, but Jake Smith was not a recruit that the nation’s top programs were drooling over. Here’s a little info on Jake Smith’s recruiting resume:

ESPN rated him the #111 OT in the class of 2010. Jake Smith was given a grade of 74 (which isn’t terrible but it is average—they gave him a 2 * rating). ESPN’s recruiting site’s explaination of grades is as follows

“Solid prospects: 68-74 (grade), These players are overmatched versus the better players in the nation. Their weaknesses will be exposed against top competition, but have the ablilty to develop into solid contributors at the non-BCS level and could be a quality fit for the FCS level of play.”

Smith was the 19th highest ranked player…of the UofL 2010 class. In fact there were only 4 incoming freshmen with a lower rating than Smith in the 2010 class (and 2 of those 4 just hadn’t been evaluated). He had a much lower rating than Chase Peterson (77), but Smith worked his butt off and has leapfroged over Peterson (and many others) on the depth chart.