The seemingly interminable preseason "watch lists" continued to flow Monday when the Butkus Award list was released.
The award goes to the nation's top linebacker, and 51 players are on the watch list. Players from four schools make up almost 25 percent of the list, as BYU (Spencer Hadley, Uani Unga and Kyle Van Noy), Iowa (Anthony Hitchens, Christian Kirksey and James Morris), Notre Dame (Carlo Calabrese, Dan Fox and Prince Shembo) and UCLA (Anthony Barr, Eric Kendricks and Jordan Zumwalt) each have three players to watch. There are two players listed from Alabama (Adrian Hubbard and C.J. Mosley), Arizona State (Carl Bradford and Chris Young), Florida State (Christian Jones and Telvin Smith), Georgia Tech (Jeremiah Attaochu and Brandon Watts), Mississippi State (Benardrick McKinney and Deontae Skinner) and Stanford (Trent Murphy and Shayne Skov).
Greg Blair (Cincinnati), Chris Borland (Wisconsin), Max Bullough (Michigan State), Hayes Pullard (USC), Ryan Shazier (Ohio State) and Yawin Smallwood (Connecticut) are among the other linebackers listed.
The Pac-12 has the most players on the list, with 11. The SEC is second with nine and the Big Ten is third with eight.
Notre Dame's Manti Te'o won the 2012 Butkus Award, and previous winners also include Von Miller (Texas A&M, 2010), Patrick Willis (Ole Miss, 2006), Derrick Johnson (Texas, 2004), Andy Katzenmoyer (Ohio State, 1997), Derrick Thomas (Alabama, 1988) and Brian Bosworth (Oklahoma, 1985 and '86), the only two-time winner.
