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The University of Mississippi Athletics
Manning Among NCAA's Today's Top VIII Recipients
12/19/2003 | Football
Dec. 19, 2003
INDIANAPOLIS - The NCAA Honors Committee has named the recipients of the NCAA Today's Top VIII Awards. The Today's Top VIII Award winners are a group of distinguished student-athletes from the 2003 calendar year who will be recognized for their academic and athletics achievements, character and leadership at the 39th annual NCAA Honors Dinner January 11, 2004, at the NCAA Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Today's Top VIII include Eli Manning, University of Mississippi, football; Alice (Duesing) Nightingale, Lake Superior State University, basketball; Andrew Hilliard, University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), football and track and field; Craig Krenzel, Ohio State University, football; Theresa Kulikowski, University of Utah, gymnastics; Kara Lawson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, basketball; Kristin Sterner, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, gymnastics; and Leoandra Willis, University of California, Los Angeles, gymnastics.
Two of the honorees were the 2003 NCAA Woman of the Year finalists from Tennessee and Alabama, and five of the Top VIII were recipients of NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships. In addition to their athletics accomplishments, the NCAA Today's Top VIII recipients have earned numerous academic honors, volunteered countless hours to community projects and served as role models for their academic institutions and to their peers.
This year's selections include the 2003 Division II Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the 2003 Academic all-American of the Year for men's track and field, a three-time Big Ten Conference all-academic team selection, the 1999 and 2000 national collegiate women's gymnastics all-around champion, the 2003 College Sports Television Network player of the year, the 2003 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award winner as the top senior quarterback, the Southeastern Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and a member of the gymnastics national championship team in 2001 and 2003. Manning, a 6-5, 218 pound quarterback from New Orleans, La., recently won the Maxwell Award as the nation's top collegiate football player and also received the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award as the nation's top senior quarterback. During his career at Ole Miss, Manning has set 45 single-game, season, and career records. He will conclude his collegiate career on Jan. 2 when Coach David Cutcliffe's Rebels play the Oklahoma State Cowboys in the SBC Cotton Bowl Classic in Dallas.
The NCAA Today's Top VIII honorees are selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, comprised of eight athletics administrators at member institutions and nationally distinguished citizens who are former student-athletes. The members of the NCAA Honors Committee are: Harry Carson, president, Harry Carson, Inc.; Cedric W. Dempsey, president emeritus, National Collegiate Athletics Association; Clyde Doughty Jr., athletics director, New York Institute of Technology; Jo Ann Harper, athletics director, Dartmouth College; Susan Hartmann, professor of history, Ohio State University; Karen L. Johnson, director of institutional research, Alfred University; John Naber, president, Naber and Associates, Inc.; and Valerie Richardson, assistant commissioner, West Coast Conference.
