Hope springs eternal in the college football spring season. Teams across the country are getting ready to include new players, coaches, and concepts into their practice routines, and soon spring games (now often televised) will introduce fans to exciting players from coast to coast. In the Transfer Portal era, there is more to learn than ever in March and April.
To celebrate the kickoff of spring ball across the college football landscape, we are releasing our first-ever Spring All-America Team. These are the 2022 players who are the best of the best, statistically and analytically, at their positions. Many position groups have quite a few worthy candidates, so when the decision was unclear, extra emphasis was given to overall career experience and schedule strength.
For example: Louisville QB Malik Cunningham was selected over Ohio State QB C.J. Stroud and Alabama QB Bryce Young (experience) and Coastal Carolina QB Grayson McCall (competition), even though all four have 99 or 100 career QB percentile ratings.
In a variation of the usual All-American listings, five slots are allotted to special teams: kickoff specialist (KO), punter (PT), field goal kicker (FG), kick returner (KR), and punt returner (PR). This was done to recognize the importance of all these distinct phases of the game, which are often unfairly lumped together into two or three categories.
