We have seen Heisman pushes fueled by a name change — Joe Theismann altering the pronunciation of his name from “Thees-mann” to rhyme with the trophy — a pricy Manhattan billboard and a bevy of promotional items.
But Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater is taking a different approach: the anti-campaign.
"He went to the coaches not wanting a Heisman-type campaign," Louisville sports information director Rocco Gasparro told WDRB.com. "He wanted it to be about team and if we won as a team, individual recognition would come anyway. It says a lot about the character of Teddy, I think, and how much his team means to him."
But what he's missing is that Bridgewater's request in itself is a campaign. It’s one that casts the Cardinals QB as a candidate outside of a beauty pageant. In a "Bachelor" season with an engagement to a stiff-armed beauty at stake, Bridgewater isn’t interested in the rose.
It’s a stance we saw Texas A&M use to perfection with winner Johnny Manziel last year.
Granted, Manziel's tactics weren't self-imposed, as it was coach Kevin Sumlin's policy that freshman couldn't talk to the media, and as we've seen in the months since he won, Johnny Football isn't one to shy away from attention (see here, here and, oh, can't forget about this one). But the silent treatment worked. And when Manziel finally was allowed to speak the week after the Aggies' season was over — and mere days before Heisman ballots had to be cast — it created a media storm no other candidate could match.
Bridgewater is doing much the same. Unlike Manziel, though, he's making his decision public, which, in a race that's all about the hype, is certain to endear him to some voters who have grown tired of the preseason buzz and jockeying for attention.
But it's also a move that only adds to a growing trend when it comes to these campaigns.
In the years since Oregon State SID John Eggers, who is credited with starting the Heisman hype machine with weekly mailers promoting "Touchdown Terry Baker" in 1962, unique promotions have become synonymous with the award chase.
BYU sent out cardboard Ty Detmer neckties called Heisman "Tys" in 1990, Marshall created Byron Leftwich bobbleheads in '02, Memphis made die-cast cars for DeAngelo Williams in '05, and, in the definition of campaign excess, Oregon boosters shelled out $250,000 for an 80-by-100-foot Joey Harrington billboard in Times Square.
In my time as a voter, I've received Ray Rice binoculars from Rutgers (2007), a Chase Daniel View Finder from Missouri ('08), a hand-held fan from Oklahoma lauding "Fan-Tastic Sam" Bradford ('08), 7-pound weights for Dan Persa and his PersaStrong theme from Northwestern (2011), and last year, Kansas State mailed a postcard with an oversized Band-Aid for tough guy Collin Klein.
Baylor did a social media push for Robert Griffin III and sent out trading cards, USC launched the Project Tro7an Matt Barkley app last year, and Louisville, in a move we certainly won't see this time around, mailed postcards saying "Teddy Bridgewater, armed with more than just bubblegum," which came with two pieces of Double Bubble.
But the campaigns fueled by those gimmicks are becoming less and less the norm. Florida did not give Tim Tebow a push in '07; neither did Alabama with Mark Ingram ('09) nor Auburn with Cam Newton ('10).
You can credit the decline in promotional items to the rise in social media doing some of the work for these programs, but standing remains the biggest key, no matter the tactics.
Manziel did that last season, both with his spectacular play and the fact that a sort of legend grew around a player who wasn't allowed to speak to the media. Bridgewater is setting himself up for a push that already has a defining narrative: the player who doesn't want to be on the marquee.
It's the anti-Heisman campaign, which in a bit of irony would have earned Bridgewater a fan in the trophy's namesake. John Heisman initially opposed the idea of honoring an individual player over a team.
But we've reached a time when the Heisman has become about the best player, not the best player to be on team in the thick of a national championship race, and the campaigns more and more seem to be reflecting that.
Bridgewater is out to let his game do the talking. And after a sophomore season in which he was named Big East Offensive Player of the Year and Sugar Bowl MVP, throwing for 3,718 yards, 27 TDs and eight interceptions and running for 11 more scores, the numbers should speak loudly.
The gimmicks, at least the ones that have schools spending thousands of dollars to send buzz-worthy promotional items to voters, are dwindling. Being different is the new Heisman chic and Bridgewater, in rebelling, is as chic as it gets right now.
Sorry, mailbox. It was fun while it lasted.
