Iowa's Logan Jones wins the Rimington Trophy

One of the most underrated positions on a football roster is the center. Each play starts with the center, and it’s a thankless job, for the most part. For the longest time, there was no award specifically for centers. As a result, Dave Rimington, for whom the award is named, began recognizing centers in 2000, with Dominic Raiola taking home the first.

Rimington was the obvious namesake for the Rimington Award as the only two-time winner of the Outland Trophy. His pedigree when it came to centers was unmatched. At Nebraska, Rimington was also a two-time unanimous All-American, and he took home the Lombardi Award in 1982. He was drafted in the first round of the 1983 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals, and he had a solid seven-year career in the NFL. He and fellow former Bengal Boomer Esiason founded the Rimington Trophy, and the rest is history.

This year, the Rimington Trophy will stay in the Big Ten. When it comes to the current makeup of the conference, 14 of the award’s 26 recipients are from Big Ten schools, including each of the last five. Iowa’s Logan Jones joined that prestigious fraternity on Friday. He beat out fellow Big Ten center from Oregon, Iapani Laloulu and Florida’s Jake Slaughter. Jones joins Tyler Linderbaum (2021) as the only Hawkeyes to win the award.

Iowa’s Logan Jones Wins the Rimington Trophy

As the anchor of a Joe Moore Award Finalist unit, Jones has been a standout among standouts. Heading into bowl season, Jones has started 50 games and was elected as a team captain for the Hawkeyes this season. If Pro Football Focus is your thing, Jones is the far-and-away top-rated center and was named a first-team All-American by the outlet. Perhaps the most impressive part of Jones’s game is that he was not called for a holding penalty at all in 2025.

Behind Jones, the Hawkeyes out-rushed their opponents nine times, including impressively out-rushing Penn State 245 to 173. On the year, Iowa amassed over 200 yards on the ground four times, and the unit as a whole only allowed 16 sacks. Behind Jones and the Hawkeye offensive line, Mark Gronowski was able to set single-season records for rushing yards and rushing touchdowns by a quarterback with 491 and 15. Gronowski led all Big Ten players with those 15 rushing touchdowns.

Jones was also a finalist for the Outland Trophy. Iowa is gearing up for the ReliaQuest Bowl against Vanderbilt, to be played on Dec. 31 at 12:00 Eastern on ESPN.