• 2012 Walter Camp Foundation All-American Team (PDF)
Eastern Illinois redshirt junior wide receiver
Erik Lora and Tennessee State sophomore tight end
A.C. Leonard have been named to the 2012 Walter Camp Foundation Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) All-American Team.
The team was selected by the head coaches and sports information directors of the Football Championship Subdivision schools and certified by the accounting and auditing firm, Marcum LLP.
This marks the fourth first-team All-American selection of the year for Lora, who has also been named to the Associated Press, AFCA and Sports Network teams. Lora finished fourth in the Walter Payton Award balloting this year and earned OVC Offensive Player of the Year honors following his record setting season. Lora finished the year with 136 receptions which broke the previous FCS record of 123. He finished with 1,664 yards which is the fourth-highest single season total in FCS history. Along the way Lora set the school record for receptions and receiving yards in a game along with the OVC record for receptions in a game (21). Lora had seven games with double-figure receptions and two more with nine catches as he averaged 11.3 catches per game, the fourth-best single season average in FCS history. Lora opened the year with seven straight 100-yard receiving games, the most by an FCS receiver since 2000. He finished with nine 100-yard receiving games.
Leonard earned his third All-American honor of the season as he was previously a first-team selection by the Sports Network and a second-team pick by the Associated Press. Leonard, in his first season with Tennessee State after transferring from Florida, caught 51 passes for 733 yards and six touchdowns in 10 games. The 733 yards were the most by a tight end at the FCS level this year and was the fourth most throughout all four divisions of college football (FBS, FCS, D-II and D-III).
Walter Camp, “The Father of American Football,” first selected an All-America team in 1889. Camp – a former Yale University athlete and football coach – is also credited with developing play from scrimmage, set plays, the numerical assessment of goals and tries and the restriction of play to eleven men per side. The Walter Camp Football Foundation – a New Haven based all-volunteer group – was founded in 1967 to perpetuate the ideals of Camp and to continue the tradition of selecting All-America teams for the Football Bowl and Championship subdivisions.