Kentucky Head Football Coach Rich Brooks has been named a finalist for the 2007 Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award, which honors the college football coaches who best exemplify responsibility and excellence on and off the field of play. Fans can cast a vote for Brooks to win for Division 1-A by December 15 at . The winner will be announced on December 29 during an ABC/ESPN special.
?More than a half-million fan votes were cast for 597 college football coaches this season, a tremendous and passionate outpouring of support from college football fans across the nation,? said Greg Gordon, Liberty Mutual vice president, Consumer Marketing. ?Each finalist embodies what makes this award different than any other: responsibility ? not only to his own team and players, but also to his school and his community.?
The ten finalists for the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision are:
Rich Brooks, University of Kentucky
Sylvester Croom, Mississippi State University
Paul Johnson, U.S. Naval Academy
Mark Mangino, University of Kansas
Joe Paterno, Penn State University
Mark Richt, University of Georgia
Rich Rodriguez, West Virginia University
Jim Tressel, Ohio State University
Tommy Tuberville, Auburn University
Ron Zook, University of Illinois
Each winner receives $50,000 from Liberty Mutual to support his civic and charitable activities, $20,000 in scholarship to his school?s alumni association, and is recognized in the permanent Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year display at the National Football Foundation?s College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind.
During the initial fan-voting phase at (September 6 ? November 27), the top 25 vote getters in each division qualified to be evaluated by an objective model designed exclusively for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year Award and reviewed and endorsed by the College Football Hall of Fame. The model arrived at the finalists by scoring each of these qualifying coaches in four areas: coaching excellence, sportsmanship and integrity, academic excellence, and community commitment.
Fan votes in this second phase account for 20 percent of each coach?s final score, with a voting committee of college football media (25 percent) and College Football Hall of Fame coaches and players (55 percent) contributing the remainder.
The winners will be announced December 29, 2007, on an ABC special presentation hosted by Hall of Fame Sportscaster Keith Jackson and Analyst Kirk Herbstreit at 5:30 p.m. (ET). The special award presentation will re-air January 8, 2008, on ESPN2 at 2:00 p.m. (ET).
