Duke`s football team hadn`t appeared on national television in 22 years
–let alone play in a bowl game–so sports information director Tom Mickle had a problem for the 1983 season.
How can a quarterback from Duke compete for postseason honors–perhaps the Heisman Trophy–against the likes of players from Nebraska, Southern California and Notre Dame, even if he is worthy of the honor? A picture on the inside cover of the team`s media guide offered the answer.
The Duke sports information office had to make an All-America.
Sure enough, Ben Bennett, who had a chance to break the NCAA career record for passing yardage, was shown lying on an operating table with his eyes closed and an EKG lead stuck to his chest. Hovering over Bennett were Mickle and his two assistants, all dressed as surgeons, one of whom was fastening a mannequin`s arm to Bennett`s right shoulder.
”Our purpose was to create an awareness of Ben Bennett as a bona fide All-America candidate,” said Mickle. ”That`s difficult for a school that hasn`t been on TV for 20 years and whose record the previous two seasons was 6-5.”
The competition for the Heisman Trophy and other postseason honors does not begin on the football field in the first week of the season. It begins in the athletic publicity offices of NCAA schools, sometimes–in the case of schools without great football reputations–many months before the season begins.
There are 1,050 members of the media who vote for the Heisman Trophy, which is sponsored by the Downtown Athletic Club in New York. The nation is divided into six sections, each of which has 175 votes. A media representative in each state is responsible for reviewing the list of voters every year.
Large schools that appear often on national television generally supply the media with just the basic promotional material: statistics, pictures, media guides. Schools that feel they have to make a special effort for attention may produce clever gimmicks or overwhelm the media with the sheer volume of information they provide.
Last season, Pittsburgh was a good example of the latter group. Sports information director Jim O`Brien was in charge of promoting offensive tackle Bill Fralic for the Heisman. No interior lineman has ever won the award.
”People called and wanted statistics on him,” O`Brien said. ”Our offensive line coach always talked about `pancaking` people–knocking them flat. So we kept track of Fralic`s pancakes. Sometimes, though, it was difficult to determine if he knocked a guy down, and sometimes the play went the other way and it didn`t make any difference.”
After Pittsburgh began the season 0-4, Fralic`s pancakes didn`t seem all that important, and the statistic was dropped.
Brigham Young is another example. Before winning the mythical national championship last season, the Provo, Utah, school had to scrape for every bit of publicity its many star quarterbacks received.
During coach LaVell Edwards` 14-year tenure, BYU has had only one national appearance on major network TV. A few years ago, its sports information department actually initiated an article about quarterback Steve Young in a magazine for left-handers, which is not exactly Sports Illustrated. ”We`re in sort of a lost time zone,” said Brigham Young SID David Schulthess. ”It`s an easy jump from the Big Eight to the Pac-10.”
The situation is somewhat alleviated this year for star quarterback Robbie Bosco, who received a great deal of attention for his performance in last year`s Holiday Bowl victory over Michigan. Plus, the television broadcast of BYU`s 1985 opener, against Boston College Aug. 29 in the Kickoff Classic at East Rutherford, N.J., is being syndicated nationally.
Still, Brigham Young`s selection as last year`s national champion was criticized by some, and Schulthess admits, ”We`re working hard on
credibility.”
Before quarterback Gifford Nielsen`s senior season in 1977, Schulthess`
office researched where the Heisman votes were concentrated. At the time, he found there were only about eight votes in Utah and fewer than that in Wyoming. Most of the votes existed in the Northeast, Texas and California.
Accordingly, BYU is responsible for some of the more creative ideas for publicity in recent years. Among the nation`s wilder efforts:
— Before current Bear quarterback Jim McMahon`s senior year at BYU in 1981, the Cougars` sports information office had his photo taken in a 1930s BYU football uniform while he struck the pose of the Heisman Trophy.
— After receiving permission from Kellogg Co. in Battle Creek, Mich., Clemson produced a ”Special K” cereal box in 1982 to correspond with the nickname of free safety Terry Kinard. His accomplishments as a football player were listed on the side instead of ingredients.
— Last season, a Navy poster had running back Napoleon McCallum dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte. ”I have not yet begun to run,” a modified version of John Paul Jones` famous saying, was printed at the top.
— Georgia distributed a flyer with kicker Kevin Butler, a 1985 Bears`
draft choice, dressed in a tuxedo and standing on a staircase. He had a towel draped over one arm and held a football and a tee on a silver platter with the other. A headline below a list of his accomplishments read, ”The Butler did it!”
— During the junior year of Bears` No. 1 draft choice William ”the Refrigerator” Perry, Clemson`s sports information office sent out a drawing of a refrigerator. Open the double doors and there was a picture of Perry, with a bag of groceries on each arm. Then last year, Clemson made a life-size poster of the defensive lineman, who was then 6 feet 3 inches and 320 pounds. — When Brigham Young was hyping a tackle named Brad Oates in the mid-1970s, the school dropped a few oats in each of the envelopes containing its weekly press releases.
All of the above served their purpose well, especially the McMahon picture, which was sent over the wires to virtually every newspaper in the country. Clemson SID Bob Bradley noted that stories about the cereal box appeared everywhere from the Rocky Mountain Times in Denver to the New York Times.
All of this, however, is met with varying degrees of acceptance among sports information directors, most of whom have backgrounds in communications rather than marketing.
There will be no full-color, life-size posters of Ohio State senior running back Keith Byars, who finished second behind Boston College`s Doug Flutie in the Heisman balloting last season. Like most Big 10 SIDs, Ohio State`s Marv Homan can afford a conservative approach to publicity because of his conference`s national exposure. But he understands Schulthess` plight.
”You bet we would have to come up with a gimmick sometimes if we were at BYU,” Homan said. ”In no way could I take the same stance in Provo, Utah. That`s not to say they don`t have a fine program. We`re just in different situations.”
The most famous example of promoting a Heisman candidate came from one of the most conservative schools in sports promotions, Notre Dame.
During spring practice after quarterback Joe Theismann`s freshman season, Notre Dame SID Roger Valdiserri and South Bend Tribune sports editor Joe Doyle were talking on the sideline. Theismann, who at the time pronounced his name
”Thees-mann,” walked past. ”There goes Joe `Thighs-mann,` as in Heisman,” Valdiserri said. Doyle included the comment in his column the next day.
The new pronunciation didn`t become well-known nationally as a Heisman promotion until a Sports Illustrated reporter came to town for a season preview of Notre Dame in 1970, Theismann`s senior year. The reporter came across Doyle`s column while looking through Theismann`s newspaper clips and mentioned it in his story. Thus the phrase was born: ”Theismann for the Heisman.” As it turned out, Stanford quarterback Jim Plunkett won the award. All SIDs agree that a national television appearance is more important than anything they can do to promote a Heisman candidate. ”If you have two or three bad games on national television, no promotion is going to help you,”
said SID Mark Dellins of UCLA.
With the proliferation of college football on cable TV and more than one TV network, Dellins added, the importance of promotions has decreased. That is, except for linemen, who produce few statistics for national comparisons.
Duke`s Bennett certainly produced enough statistics in 1983. He completed 64 percent of his passes for 3,086 yards and 17 touchdowns. Still, he managed only a third-team All-America selection behind Young and Turner Gill of Nebraska. Young simply produced better statistics, and Gill was the quarterback for a team that was No. 1 until the last game of the season. And Gill`s teammate Mike Rozier won the Heisman in 1983.
”We tried to give him a chance to win what he deserved to win,” Mickle said of Bennett. ”It was up to him to prove it on the field and,
unfortunately, we had a horrendous team that year. We began the season 0-8 and finished 3-8.
”But we got him where we wanted in the preseason.”
