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Carl Nassib is a 10-foot tall beast man who showers in vodka and feeds his baby shrimp scampi. Well, something like that. He's more like 6-foot-7, probably showers in water, doesn't have a kid as far as any of us know, and knows better than feeding a newborn shrimp scampi.
Regardless, Nassib is a beast. All we heard over the offseason from Penn State's coaches and players was that he was going to break out in a big way, but I'm willing to wager that if you asked them, even the most optimistic dude on the team wouldn't have expected Nassib to be this good. His stat line: 46 tackles, 19.5 tackles for loss, 15.5 sacks, six forced fumbles, two pass deflections, one pass breakup, one interception. That's completely insane on a million different levels. Penn State has had a lot of great pass rushers, but none have put up better numbers than the native of West Chester, Pa.
Nassib has been so good that he is up for basically every award that you can imagine. The Nagurski Trophy, given annually to the best defensive player in college football? You betcha! The Rotary Lombardi Award, given to college football's best lineman or linebacker? Heck yeah! The James Beard Award for the most outstanding pastry chef? Well, no, but if Carl Nassib decided to make a baklava tomorrow it'd probably be the best damn thing you've ever eaten.
Anyway, one award that Nassib is up for is the Burlsworth Trophy, which is given annually to the best player in the country who began their career as a walk-on. We all know that Nassib began as a walk-on and has worked his way up to being the best pass rusher in America, and we all know that a Penn Stater won this award in 2012 when Matt McGloin brought it to Happy Valley.
You may be wondering why we're writing about this. The answer is simple: you can vote and help Nassib win the trophy, because he deserves it (both because he's an outstanding football player and he's a really good dude) and his story is amazing. I'm going to do the big font, caps lock, bold type thing here, ok? Cool. Here we go:
VOTE FOR CARL NASSIB BY GOING TO THIS LINK, CLICKING ON THE LITTLE BUBBLE NEXT TO HIS NAME, AND VOTING.
I just voted again. Nassib is in second place right now, which is cool. He's beating some legitimately great players, namely Oklahoma QB Baker Mayfield, Wisconsin LB Joe Schobert, and Washington State QB Luke Falk. The only guy he isn't beating? Old Dominion LB T.J. Ricks, who is awesome, but come on, y'all. We can stuff the ballot box way more than Old Dominion fans can, right? As of 11:48 p.m. EST on Thursday night, Nassib is 299 votes behind Ricks, so if we have everyone vote from multiple web browsers on their home computer, work computer, and mobile devices, then Nassib can run away with this.
Let's stuff the Burlsworth ballot box, because nobody deserves to win this award more than Carl Nassib.