ESPN college football commentator Craig James has paired up with former college football teammate Eric Dickerson to create The Pony Express Award, which will be given to college football’s best tandem. The name of the award is a nod to the nickname given to SMU’s backfield in the 1980s, when James and Dickerson led the Mustangs’ vaunted rushing attack.
The award will be voted on by a panel of experts, who will look at two- and three-player tandems, honoring the combination whose work ethic, desire, on- and off-field leadership and playmaking ability best fuel their team, according to the award’s website.
“Eric and I were able to complement each other on the field in such a way that together we formed a much more potent weapon than even our individual talents would have suggested,” said James. “We have remained life-long friends, and each season we have always had fun talking about the great tandems that were making an imprint on the game that season. We decided someone should recognize these great combinations, and that really became the genesis of the Pony Express Award.”
No word on whether James and Dickerson will also be creating a Death Penalty Award, though that’d be fitting, since SMU was given the NCAA’s harshest penalty in the late 1980s after the program was proven to be wildly corrupt. The University of Miami would be a frontrunner to win such an award this year.