Seth McLaughlin is officially college football’s best center for the 2024 season.
McLaughlin is the winner of the 2024 Rimington Trophy, which is awarded to the best center in college football. He becomes the fourth Ohio State center to win the award, joining LeCharles Bentley (2001), Pat Elflein (2016) and Billy Price (2017).
I am incredibly honored to receive this award! Thank you Buckeye Nation for welcoming me in and giving me the opportunity to be the player that I knew I was capable of being! #GoBucks https://t.co/xQYvBZ2ycX
— Seth McLaughlin (@Seth_Mc24) December 13, 2024
Ohio State now has the outright lead for the most Rimington Trophy winners all-time, breaking a tie with Michigan, who has had three Rimington winners since the award was established in 2000.
McLaughlin won the Rimington despite playing only 10 games for Ohio State this season. His season was cut short by a torn Achilles suffered in practice before Ohio State’s 11th game of the year against Indiana.
Before that, McLaughlin had been dominant as both a pass protector and run blocker in the middle of Ohio State’s offensive line, leading the way for Ohio State’s offense to re-emerge as one of the best in the country. It was a season of redemption for McLaughlin after his Alabama career ended with an infamous performance in the Crimson Tide’s CFP semifinal loss to Michigan last season in which he had multiple errant snaps that proved costly.
While McLaughlin spent four years at Alabama before transferring to Ohio State in January, he believes he improved tremendously in just one season as a Buckeye.
“It's been great. It's everything I needed,” McLaughlin said earlier this week in an interview with the National Football Foundation. “Just being in Alabama for four years, I wasn't where I wanted to be at the end of last year. And for the people at Ohio State to welcome me in with open arms and really pour into me and develop me even further, it didn't feel like I could develop anymore as a 22-year-old senior, but as a 23-year-old fifth-year, I think they really got a lot out of me this year.”
The impact McLaughlin made on Ohio State’s offensive line this year is perhaps best illustrated by the step back it has suffered without him, particularly in the Buckeyes’ regular-season finale against Michigan, in which Ohio State scored just 10 points on 252 yards of offense. Ohio State will have to continue moving forward without him in the College Football Playoff, and it is considering the possibility of changing centers with Joshua Padilla and Luke Montgomery competing for starting jobs after Carson Hinzman struggled in The Game.
The Buckeyes are certainly glad they chose to bring in McLaughlin for what he was able to accomplish before his injury, though, and he’ll still be trying to help the team however he can from the sidelines in the CFP.
“We've got some young guys stepping up, some guys who have played a lot of football before moving into new roles, and I'm just going to do my best to coach them up and kind of see the things how I see it,” McLaughlin said. “Kind of try to be the middleman in between the players and the coaches, because if a coach says something, that might hit the player's brain a different way. Hopefully I can be that middleman and translate that and just do everything that I can to help guys. Pass that water on the sideline, keep the energy up, whatever I've got to do.”
McLaughlin was the lone Buckeye to win an individual award during Thursday night’s ESPN College Football Awards show. Ohio State safety Caleb Downs was a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, but that award was won by Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron.
