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Smith Named Academic All-America of the Year
10/28/2005 12:00 AM | Football
Oct. 28, 2005
WALTHAM, Mass. - The 2004-05 ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America of the Year honors were announced today by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Football player Alex Smith of the University of Utah received the award in the University Division, and volleyball player Carli Dale of Juniata College was selected for the college division honor.
Smith, now with the San Francisco 49ers after being the number one pick in the 2005 NFL draft, led the Utes to a perfect 12-0 season at quarterback and a No. 4 national ranking in 2004, as Utah became the first school ever from a non-Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conference to play in a BCS bowl (defeating Pittsburgh 35-7 in the Fiesta Bowl). A Heisman Trophy finalist, Smith was named National Player of the Year by Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News and was a first-team All-American.
The Mountain West Conference (MWC) Offensive Player of the Year, Smith completed 214-of-317 passes (67.5 percent) for 2,952 yards and 32 touchdowns with just four interceptions, good for a 176.5 efficiency rating. A six-time MWC Player of the Week, he broke nine career records at Utah. Academically, the native of La Mesa, Calif., earned his bachelor's degree in economics at Utah in two years with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.74 on a 4.0 scale, then began work on his master's degree in economics in the fall.
Last fall, Dale led Juniata to a 37-3 overall record and the 2004 NCAA Division III national championship as a senior, earning NCAA Tournament MVP honors. A setter who was named AVCA Division III Player of the Year, Dale averaged 13.42 assists per game (fourth in the nation) while adding 1.13 kills, 3.54 digs, and 0.41 aces per game while posting a .413 hitting percentage. She was a two-time Commonwealth Conference Player of the Year and was the first-ever Juniata athlete to earn the Middle Atlantic Corporation (MAC) Scholar-Athlete award.
The Academic All-America of the Year honor, which began in 1987-88, is awarded to the most outstanding student-athlete of the year and is chosen from the student-athletes who have been awarded Team Member of the Year honors. From over 360,000 student-athletes in the nation, just 816 are selected as Academic All-America Team members each year, twenty-four are selected as Team Members of the Year and two are named Academic All-America of the Year.
"With over 10,000 student athletes being nominated for Academic All-America each year, and considering the number of athletes completing in intercollegiate sports, to reach the epitome of what it means to be a successful student-athlete and be selected as the best of the best is quite an amazing achievement," said Bentley College's Dick Lipe, Academic All-America chair at CoSIDA.
Former recipients of Academic All-America of the Year honors include Rebecca Lobo (1994-95), Peyton Manning (1997-98), Chad Pennington (1999-00), Stacey Dales-Schuman (2001-02) and Emeka Okafor (2003-04).
The Academic All-America Teams program honors 816 male and female student-athletes annually who have succeeded at the highest level on the playing field and in the classroom. Individuals are selected through voting by CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America), a 2,000-member organization consisting of sports public relations professionals for colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.
To be eligible, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.20 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director. Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA covering all NCAA championship sports.
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