MADISON, Wis. — The website befits a candidate for Congress.
There is a biography, loaded with superlatives and the contender’s record of community service, plus a slogan. A visitor can watch a sharply produced 88-second video or browse favorable press clippings and specially chosen statistics.
Wisconsin is a presidential battleground, but the state’s flagship university is also in the thick of an entirely different campaign: a push to make running back Jonathan Taylor its first Heisman Trophy winner in two decades.
Similar, if less visible, efforts are unfolding across the country as universities, understanding the pride and public attention that come when one of their own wins college football’s most prestigious award, seek any edge in a race that culminates with an election.
Up to 929 votes — from 870 journalists, 58 living Heisman recipients and one program that allows fans a limited voice in the process — will decide who is, as the engraved award presented by the Heisman Trophy Trust says, “the outstanding college football player in the United States.” (The New York Times does not participate in the voting.) Since ballots are not distributed until early December, ahead of the Dec. 14 ceremony, there is still plenty of time for more of the lobbying, cajoling, publicizing, pandering and sweet-talking that started before the season began.
“Our view of the campaign, if you will, is pretty tactical: We know who our audience is, who we want to get, we know what information we want to get to them, and it’s just a matter of how do you do that,” said Brian Lucas, Wisconsin’s director of football brand communications and an architect of the “Bringing Running Back” campaign for Taylor. “It’s really about setting up his name to take advantage of opportunities.”
Taylor will have perhaps his biggest stage Saturday when No. 13 Wisconsin plays at No. 3 Ohio State, though the matchup lost much of its appeal after the Badgers took a stunning loss to Illinois last weekend. Taylor had 132 yards and a rushing touchdown but also a costly fumble that spurred Illinois in its fourth-quarter comeback. Still, Ohio State has a sterling offense and a few players in the Heisman conversation, and the game has significant implications for the Big Ten Conference and, perhaps, the College Football Playoff.
The notion of an off-field push for the Heisman dates to a more sober-minded era of college football, before the glut of television coverage that lets anyone find highlight after highlight with a few keystrokes or swipes.
The first such campaign can be traced to 1963, when Navy’s sports information director mailed out pamphlets about Roger Staubach and regularly visited sports writers in New York to bolster the junior quarterback’s Heisman chances.
The strategy worked, creating a precedent. It also generated a template that other colleges could tailor to their budgets, creativity and prestige. Openings emerged to play some wacky angles.
Names, for example, are fair game. At the urging of a Notre Dame official, Joe Theismann changed the pronunciation of his surname to rhyme with “Heisman.” (He placed second, behind Stanford’s Jim Plunkett, in 1970.) In 2001 Oregon spent $250,000 and took out a billboard in midtown Manhattan to promote Joey Harrington, who had been rechristened, at least for the eyes of pedestrians, as “Joey Heisman.” (Harrington placed fourth.)
The Postal Service has also been a staple. West Virginia mailed vinyl records of a song, “Ole Hoss, the Ballad of West Virginia’s Jeff Hostetler,” in 1983. Wisconsin dropped hundreds of postcards weekly during the 1999 season, counting down the yards until Ron Dayne broke Ricky Williams’ college rushing record. In 2013, when Northern Illinois had a contender in Jordan Lynch, the school cut YouTube videos and sent out soft-sided lunchboxes.
“College football is all about arguing: You want to basically win the argument and the debate, and it’s the same debate we used to have with the polls at the end of the season,” said Chris Huston, the Heisman’s official historian. “When you can wed the narrative of your campaign with the results on the field, you’ve got a really good chance to make a lot of noise in the Heisman race.”
Some universities prefer quieter efforts, reasoning that while fans might embrace flashy campaigns, voters tend to have all the information they want. Aside from tweets and videos that seem to flow from just about every college sports program, their maneuverings might be almost entirely focused on private conversations with voters and efforts to position their most promising players for interviews with news media outlets that often handicap the Heisman race.
“It’s really not a whole lot different than politics: Perception is reality,” said Paul Finebaum, an ESPN commentator who is among the voters who doubt the efficacy of modern campaigns. “We all think we’re really smart, but we’re not. We’re going to be heavily influenced by what’s literally right in front of us and what other people think.”
Huston concedes that it is impossible to know with certainty how many votes can be swayed by an active Heisman campaign, but he believes the efforts can shape the outcome.
“It’s really hard to quantify the influence, just like it’s hard to quantify how well a certain ad might do for Verizon,” said Huston, who used to run a website that tracked the annual race and worked on some of Southern California’s Heisman campaigns. “I think for schools that rightly err on the side of doing one, it could have an effect. If it’s really good, it could have a really good effect.”
Some universities with contenders this year, including Louisiana State and Oklahoma, did not respond to inquiries about their plans. Their approaches, whatever they prove to be, could shift with the season as the fortunes of players rise and fall with every touchdown or fumble.
“Some years we have a dilemma of deciding which Buckeye to celebrate,” Jerry Emig, a spokesman for Ohio State, wrote in an email. “And that’s a good thing! Waiting until season’s end allows this decision to be decided at the grassroots/playing field level.”
Last December, for instance, Ohio State sent out a poster extolling Dwayne Haskins, its quarterback, on the day after the Big Ten championship game. The piece noted that Haskins had been the game’s MVP — and included a dig or two at Kyler Murray, the Oklahoma quarterback, and Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama’s quarterback, who were the Heisman favorites. (Murray won, followed by Tagovailoa and Haskins.)
This year, Wisconsin began mapping its strategy for Taylor by early June, when a group of athletic department employees convened to discuss parallel conundrums: how to help a tailback make a splash for an award that has, at least in the 21st century, tended to go to quarterbacks, and how to differentiate Taylor from other rushers.
Wisconsin officials called a handful of national reporters to hear their views of Taylor and to seed the university’s arguments, which compare the junior’s statistics to those of other celebrated tailbacks, including Dayne and Herschel Walker.
In meetings and memos, Wisconsin staff members discussed Taylor’s strengths: “video game-type numbers,” name recognition and personality. Their goals were explicit: “Position him as a Heisman front-runner” and “break through all the hype surrounding quarterbacks.”
They settled on a plan that called for a blend of public and private efforts. While there would be a snazzy website, Wisconsin officials concluded, there would also be formal interviews, a few pull-aside meetings at Big Ten media days in Chicago and news conferences after games at Camp Randall Stadium. They believed their message needed to resonate in media markets beyond the Big Ten, knowing that people familiar with the conference had spent years watching Taylor hustle through defenses.
Their goal was to reach the Michigan game, Sept. 21, with Taylor still in the discussion and hope that his performance would let his candidacy take greater shape. He rushed for 203 yards and two touchdowns that day and has been seen as a contender ever since.
Even with his prospects weakened since the loss at Illinois, the Ohio State game offers another opportunity for Taylor. After he emerged recently from a swarm of cameras at Camp Randall, Taylor chuckled over how Heisman campaigns had evolved.
“I didn’t know they made websites,” he said. But he recalled the stories he had heard from past stars whose names had been in the mix for college football’s ultimate personal prize.
“The biggest thing they talked about was every time they stepped on the field, they were just trying to win games for their team,” Taylor said. “I just need to help my team win games, and everything will fall into place.”
