Quarterbacks Stetson Bennett of Georgia, Max Duggan of TCU, C.J. Stroud of Ohio State and Caleb Williams of Southern California were announced as finalists for the Heisman Trophy on Monday night.
The award given to the outstanding player in college football, determined by a vote of more than 900 sports journalists and past winners, will be presented Saturday at the Lincoln Center in New York.
Bennett has quarterbacked defending national champion Georgia to a second straight spot in the College Football Playoff and is 24-1 as the Bulldogs’ starter since last season.
The sixth-year player from Blackshear, Georgia, was most valuable player of the Southeastern Conference championship game after throwing for 274 yards and four touchdowns in a 50-30 win over LSU that ran the Bulldogs’ record to 13-0.
Of Georgia’s three all-time wins over a No. 1-ranked team, Bennett was quarterback for two of them. He was at the controls for the Bulldogs’ win over Alabama in the national championship game last January, and he passed for two TDs and ran for another in a 27-13 win over Tennessee last month.
Duggan willed TCU to its first CFP appearance with an inspiring performance in the Big 12 championship game against Kansas State.
Duggan, who had heart surgery two years ago, was at the center of one of the signature sequences of the season. It happened late in the fourth quarter when he broke loose for 40 yards and then, visibly out of breath, ran for an 8-yard TD and completed his 2-point pass to bring the Frogs back from an 11-point, fourth-quarter deficit. Duggan came up just short of the goal line on a run in overtime, and the Frogs lost for the first time this season, 31-28.
The fourth-year player from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was Gary Patterson’s starter for two seasons before first-year coach Sonny Dykes picked Chandler Morris over Duggan in the preseason. Duggan regained the job for the second game because of an injury to Morris and ended up leading the Big 12 in every major passing category.
Stroud, in his third season out of Inland Empire, California, is a Heisman finalist for the second year in a row. He was fourth in voting last year. He came into this season regarded as the front-runner and remained the favorite as Ohio State piled up impressive numbers through the first eight games.
But he struggled against Northwestern, the worst team in the Big Ten, and he couldn’t rally the Buckeyes in the second half of their most recent game, a 45-23 home loss to Michigan.
Still, Stroud has the nation’s highest passer rating and is tied for the lead with 37 touchdown passes.
Williams transferred to USC from Oklahoma in February, two months after Lincoln Riley was hired away from the Sooners.
The second-year player from Washington is responsible for a nation-leading 21.7 points per game. He turned in a gutty performance in the Pac-12 championship game Friday, injuring his left hamstring on a 59-yard run in the first quarter but staying in the game and finishing with 363 yards passing and three touchdowns despite a noticeable limp in the 47-24 loss to Utah.
Williams has thrown for 37 touchdowns against just four interceptions and has amassed a school-record 4,447 total yards. Including his 10 rushing touchdowns, he has accounted for a school-record 47.
Williams and Stroud also are finalists for the Maxwell Award as the top performer in the college game, and they are joined by Duggan as finalists for the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award.
N.C. STATE: North Carolina State quarterback Devin Leary plans to enter his name into the transfer portal for his final season of eligibility.
CINCINNATI: Cincinnati hired Louisville’s Scott Satterfield to be its next coach, the university announced.
Louisville was 7-5 this season under Satterfield and earned a berth in the Fenway Bowl, where coincidentally it will face Cincinnati. He replaces Luke Fickell, who recently left to become coach at Wisconsin.
FLORIDA: Quarterback Anthony Richardson, who is considered more of a long-term project than a slam-dunk prospect, will leave school early and enter the NFL draft.
Richardson’s departure leaves freshman Max Brown, Ohio State transfer Jack Miller or walk-on Kyle Engel to make his first career start in the Las Vegas Bowl against 17th-ranked Oregon State (9-3).
OHIO STATE: Star receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba will not play in the College Football Playoff semifinal game against top-ranked Georgia while he continues to rehabilitate a leg injury and prepare for the 2023 NFL draft.
The AP Preseason All-American was hurt in the Buckeyes’ opener against Notre Dame and played in just two other games. Details on the seriousness of his injury weren’t disclosed through the season.
CLEMSON: Quarterback DJ Uiagalelei has entered the transfer portal after an up-and-down two seasons as the starter, the school confirmed.
Uiagalelei was replaced after two series in Saturday’s 39-10 win over North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship, and Coach Dabo Swinney already has announced freshman Cade Klubnik will start in the Orange Bowl against Tennessee.
MEN’S BASKETBALL
TOP 25: Houston and Texas remain firmly entrenched atop The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll, while preseason No. 1 North Carolina has dropped out entirely after a fourth straight loss.
The Cougars earned 37 of 62 first-place votes, extending the program’s first stay at No. 1 since the “Phi Slama Jama” days in the 1980s for another week. Houston (8-0) beat Norfolk State and Saint Mary’s in its first week at the top.
The Longhorns received 14 first-place votes. No. 3 Virginia got three votes and No. 4 Purdue got the remaining eight.
Connecticut (9-0) climbed to No. 5, the program’s highest ranking since early in the 2011-12 season. Other than the top five, there are three other teams in the AP Top 25 that entered Monday undefeated (No. 11 Auburn, No. 13 Maryland and No. 23 Mississippi State).
North Carolina is only the sixth team to go from preseason No. 1 to unranked since at least the 1961-62 season, most recently with Michigan State during the 2019-20 season.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
(8) NORTH CAROLINA STATE 65, GEORGIA 54: Mimi Collins scored 19 points and visiting North Carolina State (8-1) earned the program’s first win over Georgia (8-2) in 10 tries.
TOP 25: Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer stands atop The Associated Press women’s basketball poll with the most appearances all time, breaking a tie with the late Pat Summitt.
VanDerveer’s Cardinal remained No. 2 behind top-ranked South Carolina, giving her 619 weeks with one of her teams in the AP Top 25: 592 weeks with Stanford and 27 with Ohio State when she was in charge of that program. Summitt’s 618 weeks in the poll all came with Tennessee.
Louisville fell out of the Top 25 for the first time since 2016, a span of 127 weeks. That was the fifth longest active streak. The Cardinals (5-4) started the season ranked seventh and have struggled to find consistency this year, dropping their last two games to Ohio State and Middle Tennessee.
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