The matchup between Texas Tech's Graham Harrell and Kansas State's Josh Freeman will garner a little extra attention this weekend.
The Davey O'Brien Foundation highlights marquee matchups every week this season between two quarterbacks featured on the Davey O'Brien Award list. The list recognizes candidates in line for the award which honors the best quarterback in the nation at season's end. Past marquee matchups this season include Kansas' Todd Ressing against South Florida's Matt Grothe and BYU's Matt Hall and Washington's Jake Locker. This week's matchup will be between Harrell and Freeman.
"We always try to select the best pure quarterback to quarterback matchup," said Danielle Moorman, executive director of the O'Brien Foundation. "That's really what we're going for is to highlight the quarterbacks. We just didn't think there was a better game out there than the Tech-Kansas State game this weekend. We think it'll be a real good offensive battle between the two."
Harrell enters Big 12 play completing 120-of-186 passes for 1,573 yards, 12 touchdowns and three interceptions. The passing yards are second in the nation to Houston's Case Keenum. Freeman has completed 77 of 115 passes on the season for 1,105 yards, 11 touchdowns and two interceptions. His passing yards rank 24th in the nation.
Moorman said the matchups this year have varied from many different conferences and many different teams.
"We've had a lot of (Southeastern Conference), Big 12 (Conference), (Pacific-10 Conference), Mountain West (Conference)," she said. "It really has been spread across the country to highlight all the quarterbacks."
There are 10 Big 12 quarterbacks on the list this season. Some besides Freeman and Harrell included Baylor's Robert Griffin, Missouri's Chase Daniel and Oklahoma's Sam Bradford.
Fans will impact the outcome for the O'Brien Award for the second year in a row. Moorman said fans can visit voteobrien.org to vote for their favorite quarterback to be a semifinalist. She said the top three vote-getters automatically will be added to the foundation's semifinalist list. After the semifinalists are announced, 5 percent of the votes will go into determining the finalists and the winner for the award, Moorman said. The semifinalists will be announced on Oct. 27 and the list approximately will be 15 to 17 quarterbacks.
Harrell is seventh with 472 votes, while Freeman is 27th with eight. The leading vote-getter currently is Texas' Colt McCoy with 2,839 and counting. Last year, Florida's Tim Tebow took home the award.
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