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FORT WORTH, Texas (Aug. 7, 2025) — Graduate student quarterback
Parker Navarro is representing Ohio on the 2025 Davey O'Brien National Quarterback Award Preseason Watch List today (Aug. 7), as announced by the Davey O'Brien Foundation. The preseason watch list features three dozen of the nation's top returning college quarterbacks.
Navarro (Tempe, Ariz) has also been featured on the Walter Camp 2025 Player of the Year Preseason Watch List and the 2025 Maxwell Award Watch List.
Navarro made 13 starts during the 2024 campaign, tallying 2,423 passing yards on 295 passes with 195 completions. Also a force to be reckoned with on the ground, he rushed for 1,054 yards on 160 attempts with 18 touchdowns, becoming the second quarterback in program history to log over 1,000 yards on the ground in a single season as well as the first quarterback to record over 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in the same season. A four-time 2024 Mid-American Conference Offensive Player of the Week (Sept. 30, Nov. 15, Nov. 25, Dec. 2), Navarro also earned Davey O'Brien Great 8 recognition twice (Dec. 2 and Jan. 22), All-MAC Second Team Offense accolades and was named both the MAC Championship Offensive Player of the Game and 2024 StaffDNA Cure Bowl MVP honors.
Compiled by a subset of the Davey O'Brien National Selection Committee, this year's list was selected based on previous Division I career player performance as well as expectations heading into the 2025 college football season.
The preseason list features 16 seniors, 13 juniors and seven sophomores. Six players – Drew Allar (Penn State), Blake Horvath (Navy), Kevin Jennings (SMU), Cade Klubnik (Clemson), John Mateer (Oklahoma) and Diego Pavia (Vanderbilt) – were semifinalists in 2024.
The Big 12 Conference leads all leagues with eight quarterbacks honored. The Big 12 is followed closely by the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference, both with seven.
The official Davey O'Brien Midseason Watch List will be released on Tuesday, Oct. 21, and will contain active quarterbacks from the Preseason Watch List, players honored as weekly Great 8 recipients through the season's first eight weeks and any additional quarterbacks approved by the selection subcommittee.
The 35-player Davey O'Brien QB Class of 2025 will be announced on Tuesday, Oct. 28. For the fifth straight year, fan voting on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) will earn players bonus selection committee votes during the semifinalist, finalist and winner voting rounds. First-round fan voting will begin Oct. 28 following the QB Class announcement.
The list of semifinalists selected from the QB Class will be named on Wednesday, Nov. 12. The Foundation will announce the three finalists two weeks later (Tuesday, Nov. 25). The 2025 Davey O'Brien Award winner will be unveiled live on ESPN on Thursday, Dec. 11, during The Home Depot College Football Awards.
The Davey O'Brien National Quarterback Award is presented annually to the nation's best college quarterback and is the oldest and most prestigious national quarterback award. The 49th Annual Davey O'Brien Awards Dinner honoring the winner will be held Monday, Feb. 16, 2026, at The Fort Worth Club in Fort Worth, Texas. For more information, visit
www.daveyobrienaward.com.
About the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA)
The Davey O'Brien National Quarterback Award is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA), which encompasses college football's most prestigious awards. The NCFAA's 25 awards have honored more than 950 recipients since 1935. Visit NCFAA.org for more information.
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