VANCOUVER \u2014 Rutgers running back Antwan Raymond was awarded the 2025 Jon Cornish Trophy on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The award is given annually to the top Canadian player in NCAA football.<\/p>\n
Raymond, of Montreal, becomes the first Quebec-born player to claim the honour. Raymond ran for 1,241 yards (5.1-yard average) and 13 TDs this season for Rutgers. He also added 18 catches for 225 yards and two touchdowns. <\/p>\n
Raymond was a semifinalist for the Doak Walker Award, given annually to the NCAA\u2019s top running back, and had 240 yards rushing on 41 carries earlier this season versus Maryland. <\/p>\n
He becomes the third running back to capture the award (Chuba Hubbard in 2019, and Chase Brown in 2022).<\/p>\n
Hubbard (Carolina Panthers) and Brown (Cincinnati Bengals) are both now playing in the NFL.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honour to be included with running backs like (Chase) Brown and Chuba (Hubbard) in winning this award,\u201d Raymond said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s Akheem Mesidor, a defensive lineman at Miami, was the award runner-up. Rounding out the finalists were Vancouver\u2019s Ty Benefield (safety, Boise State), Edmonton\u2019s Nuer Gatkuoth (defensive lineman, Wake Forest) and Rutgers safety Jett Elad, of Mississauga, Ont.<\/p>\n
Raymond tops a solid Canadian contingent at Rutgers that includes Elad, linebacker Dariel Djabome and defensive linemen Djbril Abudo-Rahman and Farrell Gnagno.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot, with the other Canadians on this team,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all support each other when it feels like we\u2019re far away from home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cornish, of New Westminster, B.C., enjoyed a stellar career as a running back at Kansas before helping the Calgary Stampeders win two Grey Cup titles. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a year where the dominant defensive players from Canada played on the defensive side of the ball, Antwan Raymond burst from the pack,\u201d said Cornish Trophy trustee\/chair Jim Mullin. \u201cHe convinced the selection committee with his performance that he was worthy of a unanimous selection as the top Canadian in NCAA football.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 17, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VANCOUVER \u2014 Rutgers running back Antwan Raymond was awarded the 2025 Jon Cornish Trophy on Wednesday. The award…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,4852,82],"class_list":["post-351694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-human-interest","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}