Austin Peay Governors Football’s Wesley Kitts named as Campbell Trophy semifinalist

APSU Sports: Austin Peay Football

Dallas, TX – Wesley Kitts, a senior running back who has had three 100-yard games so far in 2012 for the Austin Peay State University football team, has been selected as a semifinalist for the 2012 William V. Campbell Trophy, the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame (NFF) announced Thursday.

Newsome is one of 147 semifinalists, with Eastern Kentucky’s Patrick Ford as the only other Ohio Valley Conference representative on the list. In fact, only 35 Football Championship Subdivision student-athletes were recognized.

Nominated by their schools, which are limited to one nominee each, candidates for the awards must be a senior or graduate student in their final year of eligibility, have a GPA of at least 3.2 on a 4.0 scale, have outstanding football ability as a first team player or significant contributor, and have demonstrated strong leadership and citizenship. The class is selected each year by the NFF Awards Committee, which is comprised of a nationally recognized group of media, College Football Hall of Famers and athletics administrators.

Kitts owns a 3.3 grade-point average as an applied exercise science major with a health science minor education minor. He is a four-time member of the Dean’s List (3.5 GPA), six-time member of the Athletics Director’s Honor Roll (3.0 GPA) plus a two-time member of OVC Commissioner’s Honor Roll (3.25 GPA for year).

He is an Alpha Tau Omega Founding Father and served as the organization’s treasurer. In addition, he has been a part of four Plant the Campus Red spring activities as well as having read at elementary schools.

The NFF Awards Committee will select up to 16 recipients, and the results will be announced via a national press release on Thursday, Oct. 25. Each recipient will receive an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship, and they will vie as finalists for the 2011 William V. Campbell Trophy. Each member of the 2011 National Scholar-Athlete Class also will travel to New York City to be honored December 4th during the 55th NFF Annual Awards Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, where their accomplishments will be highlighted. One member of the class also will be announced live at the event as the winner of the Campbell Trophy.

Named in honor of Bill Campbell, the chairman of Intuit, former player and head coach at Columbia University and the 2004 recipient of the NFF’s Gold Medal, the award comes with a 25-pound bronze trophy and increases the amount of the recipient’s grant by $7,000 for a total post-graduate scholarship of $25,000. A total distribution of $300,000 in scholarships will be awarded at the NFF Annual Awards Dinner, pushing the program’s all-time distributions to more than $10.1 million.

Launched in 1959, the NFF scholar-athlete program became the first initiative in history to award post-graduate scholarships based on both a player’s academic and athletic accomplishments. The Campbell Trophy, first awarded in 1990, adds to the program’s mystique, having previously honored two Rhodes Scholars, a Rhodes Scholar finalist, two Heisman Trophy winners and five first-round NFL draft picks.

In 2011, the NFF and Fidelity announced a multi-year initiative between the two organizations to celebrate the scholar-athlete ideal and a joint commitment to higher education. As part of the initiative, Fidelity became the first presenting sponsor ever in the 54-year history of the NFF National Scholar-Athlete Awards program.