Let’s hope this holds through the end of the year.
With seven weeks of the college football season complete, the sport’s media has been focused on mid-season accolades. Typically we ignore these sorts of “awards” around here since the Syracuse Orange are rarely included. With Dino Babers’s offense this year, though? No longer the case.
SI.com named its mid-season All-America team today and while there were no Orange players on the first-team, the second-team featured SU wide receiver Amba Etta-Tawo. Etta-Tawo, as you’re well aware, has the second most receiving yards in the country (930) and seventh-most receptions (56), along with six scores. Oklahoma’s Dede Westbrook and Cal’s Chad Hansen were first-teamers.
Elsewhere, Syracuse received additional honors from ESPN. In Ryan McGee’s “unconventional” midseason awards, the Orange were acknowledged for cool threads. Unfortunately it was for the platinum uniforms they wore vs. Virginia Tech. They’ll be re-added to the rotation from now on, of course, after SU pulled off the upset.
The “press conference of the week” honor went to something that wasn’t a press conference at all. Rather, it was Dino Babers’s post-game speech from Saturday, which is still making the rounds many days later.
On ESPN’s ACC Blog, the staff also named mid-season superlatives once again involving Syracuse. Etta-Tawo received the nod as “best newcomer” despite the award typically going to freshmen. The Orange’s big win over Virginia Tech was also named the upset of the season thus far.
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Do we think Etta-Tawo can hold onto some All-American hype through the rest of the season? If he can, he’d be the program’s first selection since 2001 (Dwight Freeney).
