Five Ferris State Football Standouts Garner Don Hansen D2 All-America Honors
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Big Rapids, Mich. - Five members of the Ferris State University football squad, including a nation-leading four first-team honorees, have been chosen to the 2019 Don Hansen's Football Gazette All-America Team as announced today.
The Bulldogs had four players receive All-America First Team accolades in senior offensive guard Tyler Allison (Clinton Township) in addition to senior defensive end Austin Edwards (Lansing), senior linebacker Avonte Bell (Lansing) and senior cornerback James Ceasar (Detroit) from one of the nation's top defensive units. Meanwhile, junior offensive tackle Dylan Pasquali (Trenton) garnered All-America Third Team recognition.
Edwards was also chosen as the 2019 Don Hansen's Division II Football National Defensive Player of the Year.
Previously, all five claimed Hansen's All-Super Region Three First Team recognition. The trio of Edwards, Allison and Ceasar have been consensus All-America picks by nearly every source this past year while both Bell and Pasquali received the first All-America mentions of their FSU careers.
The Bulldogs' four first-team honorees were the most in the country and represented four of the five first-team All-Americans from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. A total of seven representatives from the GLIAC were featured on one of the top three All-America squads with the Bulldogs garnering five of the seven mentioned.
The Don Hansen team carries out the legacy of long-time small college football advocate Don Hansen, who passed away at age 75 on Aug. 29, 2010. Hansen, from Brookfield, Ill., started and published Don Hansen's National Weekly Football Gazette for three decades, selecting NCAA Division II All-America teams for the first time in 1988. Don Hansen's Football Gazette began selecting Division II All-Region squads in 2003.
The Bulldogs concluded the year with a 12-1 overall record en route to the national semifinals and a GLIAC Championship. It was FSU's second consecutive conference crown and this year marked the Bulldogs' fourth-straight trip to the national quarterfinals or beyond, which is the longest streak in the country. This year's national semifinal contest marked the first-ever semifinal played at home for the Bulldogs and the latest game ever played in a year at Top Taggart Field. Over the past two seasons, the Bulldogs have compiled a 27-2 mark.