• Complete 2014 Walter Camp FCS All-American Team
Three Ohio Valley Conference football players have been named to the 2014 Walter Camp Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) All-America Team on Tuesday.
The selections included Eastern Illinois senior offensive lineman
Collin Seibert, Jacksonville State senior offensive lineman
Max Holcombe and Murray State junior kick returner
Pokey Harris.
Seibert, who was named an AFCA All-American on Monday, helped the Panthers offense rank in the Top 20 nationally this season in both total offense (15th, 480.1 yards/game) and rushing offense (12th, 236.3 yards/game). He anchored the offensive unit grading out at over 90 percent for the season in earning All-OVC first-team honors for the third-straight season. He also helped protect second-team All-OVC quarterback Jalen Whitlow who passed for 2,075 yards and 15 touchdowns and rushed for 792 yards and 12 additional scores in ranking 26th nationally in total offense. This marks the second-straight year Seibert has earned first team All-America honors by at least one organization; he was a first-team selection by Sports Network as a junior in leading EIU to the OVC Championship
Holcombe set an OVC record by starting 49 consecutive games (every game of his career) at center for Jacksonville State. The senior has a leader of an offensive line that helped the Gamecocks ranks fourth nationally in total offense (510.8 yards/game), fourth in rushing offense (285.3 yards/game) and 20th in scoring offense (35.2 points/game) during the regular season. Holcombe's play helped the Gamecocks to a 10-2 overall record, OVC Championship (with a perfect 8-0 mark) and berth in the FCS Playoffs as the No. 3 overall seed. JSU climbed to as high as No. 2 in the national polls in 2014 after winning 10-straight games following a season-opening loss to FBS Michigan State.
Harris was the only FCS player to return three kickoffs for touchdowns this season (only two FCS players had more than one touchdown return), which was tied for the most in Division I (both FBS or FCS). He returned two of those kickoffs 100 yards for a touchdown, doing so in back-to-back weeks; his 100-yard returns were two of just 12 in OVC history and he is now one of just three OVC players all-time to have a pair of 100-yard kicks (and first to do it in back-to-back weeks). Overall he ranked seventh nationally in kickoff return average (28.8 yards/return) and was 23rd nationally in all-purpose yards (138.42/game).
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 annually an All-America team.
The Walter Camp Football Foundation is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA). The NCFAA was founded in 1997 as a coalition of the major collegiate football awards to protect, preserve and enhance the integrity, influence and prestige of the game’s predominant awards. The NCFAA encourages professionalism and the highest standards for the administration of its member awards and the selection of their candidates and recipients.