UCLA Football: Carsen Ryan and Duke Clemens Named to Mackey, Rimington Watch Lists

The Mackey Award is presented to the nation's most outstanding tight end while the Rimington Trophy honors the nation's premier center. Plus, the latest on realignment.

Duke Clemens (62) was named to two preseason award watch lists this week. (Photo Credit: Don Liebig/uclabruin.com)

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Let’s start today with the topic at the top of everyone’s Twitter feeds: realignment.

We continue to witness to implosion of the Pac-12 Conference which now appears to be down to either six or eight teams depending on the minute. The latest is that Arizona looks to be joining the Colorado Buffaloes by moving to the Big 12 and it is expected that the Big Ten will announce the addition of Oregon and Washington later today increasing the number of West Coast teams in the superconference when the Bruins make the move next season.

There remains much speculation regarding four of the other six teams. ASU and Utah seem hesitant to make the switch to the Big 12 with Arizona while Stanford and UC Berkeley may or may not be asked to join the Big Ten too.

The only two schools that appear to be certain to be left behind are Washington State and Oregon State. These two schools along with any combination of ASU, Utah, Stanford and UC Berkeley which don’t leave appear to be destined to move into a reconfigured (and, perhaps, renamed) 14 to 18 team Mountain West. Could the remnants of the Pac-12 and the Mountain West schools adopt the Pac-12/14/16/18 moniker? Possibly.

The only thing that’s certain at this point is that UCLA and Southern Cal will play in the Big Ten next year. Buckle your seat belt. It could be a turbulent few weeks as we head into football season.

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With that out of the way, let’s get to the real UCLA football news for today: More Bruins have been named to preseason watch lists.

First, we have a name that came as a bit of a surprise to me. That’s Carsen Ryan. The sophomore who is still listed on the official site as a running back has been named to the Mackey Award watch list.

Here’s the thing though.

He was recruited to Westwood as a tight end. 247Sports had him ranked as the 24th best tight end nationally out of high school, but I suspect that his “move” to running back last season was intended to get him on the field as early as possible and, now that Michael Ezeike and David Priebe have graduated, he will officially be moved back to tight end soon, if not already, and this is certainly an indication of that. I’d also expect a likely number change from number 20 by the time the Bruins play Coastal Carolina on September 2.

That’s all because the Mackey Award is given annually to the nation’s most outstanding tight end and Ryan is the only Bruin on this watch list which seems to indicate that he will be the Bruins’ starter.

Meanwhile, UCLA center Duke Clemens was named to his second preseason watch list today. After he was named to the Outland Trophy watch list on Tuesday, he was also named to the Rimington Trophy watch list today. While the Outland Trophy honors the nation’s most outstanding offensive lineman, the Rimington Trophy is presented to the nation’s premier center by the Boomer Esiason Foundation.

The Rimington Trophy is named after Dave Rimington who was the only two-time winner of the Outland Trophy and he is considered by many to be the best college lineman of all time.

Go Bruins!!!

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