On a late summer day in Annapolis in 1963, L. Budd Thalman, the sports information director for the U.S. Naval Academy, sat in his chair envisioning a stellar season for the Midshipmen. The team had finished 5-5 the previous year, and Thalman was well aware of the talent of his scrambling junior quarterback, Roger Staubach.
Staubach had great stats -- 1,231 total yards and 14 TDs, including seven rushing and seven receiving -- and with plenty of photos and stat sheets lying around the office, Thalman thought it would be a good idea to start promoting Staubach for the Heisman -- even before the very first game was played.
"I mailed a preseason pamphlet to a lot a people," said Thalman, who will retire in July after a 39-year career, including the last 15 at Penn State. "He was on the cover and then it had his bio, some selected statistics and quotes from people around the country. People had gathered information like that before, but I don't think anyone had ever printed it."
If he only knew then what he was starting. By sending out the 1,000 pamphlets that year, Thalman had no idea that years later schools with potential Heisman finalists would be sending out similar flyers and eventually postcards, e-mail updates and CD-Roms to promote their candidates.
Despite the proliferation of national television contracts and the Internet, many athletic departments have felt the need to promote their candidates because they simply can't pass up the great credibility that the label" Heisman winner" lends to a program.
"A Drew Brees Heisman victory would be huge for Purdue," said Jim Vruggink, Purdue's media relations director, who started planning the Drew Brees Heisman campaign after Brees' sophomore season. "We had three runner-ups in the 60s with Bob Griese (1966), Leroy Keyes (1968) and Mike Phipps (1969), but when Drew came along I made it a personal challenge to do everything I could possibly do to get him that award.
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The Original
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Thirty-seven years after Roger Staubach won the Heisman, the supposed Heisman campaign founder L. Budd Thalman regrets that he is even considered the father of today's trend.
"I'm terribly sorry that I started this whole process," said Thalman, who was the leading vote-getter when he was inducted into the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame in 1998. "It's a ridiculous amount of money that these schools are spending."
Thalman said the pamphlets might have given Roger some additional recognition, but if there was anything that he did to help Staubach win the award, it was traveling back and forth to New York every Monday.
"In 1963, I got most my work done on Sunday and every Monday I took the train to New York for the New York Football Writer's Luncheon. In the 1950s and 60s, the New York media was the most influential media in the country and it was Coach Wayne Hardin's idea to go every week."
Thalman's trips might have helped his quarterback, who took first place over Georgia Tech quarterback Billy Lothridge by 1,356 votes -- currently the seventh-largest margin of victory in Heisman history. At the time, Staubach was only the fourth junior to win the award in its 30-year history.
Said Thalman of Staubach's knowledge of his Monday trips: "I doubt that Roger even knew that it was going on."
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"For an re-emerging program like Purdue, saying that we have a Heisman trophy winner can help us be better than a flash-in-the-pan and can actually help sustain a program."
Vruggink certainly can't be accused of being behind the game. Following in the footsteps of Georgia Tech and Alabama, which had CD-Roms for Joe Hamilton and Shaun Alexander, respectively, Vruggink last January had a former Purdue swimmer make the Drew Brees version for her senior final project. The discs went out before the season.
"It's either going to be a collector's item or a coaster," said Vruggink, who was a college football writer for the Ipsilanti (Mich.) Press in the 70s. "But if it's going to sway some votes, it's worth it."
The cost for promoting Brees this year was approximately $10,000, according to Vruggink.
Although Virginia Tech is confident that last year's third-place vote-getter will return to the Downtown Athletic Club, the athletics department did spend $10,000 to send out postcards five times throughout the season to promote quarterback Michael Vick.
"His name was out there from last year and people knew who he was, based on his games against Miami and Boston College and especially the National Championship game," said Dave Smith, sports information director at Virginia Tech.
Smith said that they could have done more, but Hokies head coach Frank Beamer elected to take a more low-key approach to Vick's campaign.
The Hokies weren't the only ones to cut back, but for TCU, it wasn't by design. As a result of TCU leaving the Western Athletic Conference this season, TCU's budget was cut. So instead of funding a lavish campaign for running back LaDainian Tomlinson, the campaign was built solely on private donations.
Tomlinson, who averaged almost 200 yards per game and led Division I-A in rushing this year, had LTfor2000.com, bumper stickers, posters, notepads and postcards. Of course, TCU's only loss to San Jose State ended the team's undefeated season and slightly deflated the Tomlinson for Heisman campaign.
While TCU was ready for Tomlinson to be a candidate, Northwestern was caught off guard by running back Damien Anderson's success. "It's was just like Darnell (Autry) in 1995," said Kyle Coughlin, interim sports information director for Northwestern. "Coming into the season no one from our office would expect the type of exposure that he's getting now."
Ironically the two Heisman front runners -- Florida State's Chris Weinke and Oklahoma's Josh Heupel -- are having little done by their respective schools.
"We've spent not one Yankee dime on the campaign for Chris Weinke this year," said Rob Wilson, sports information director at Florida State. "Coach Bowden's philosophy about promoting his players for the Heisman trophy is that because we are so high profile now and each one of our games is on television, he feels that it could be counterproductive to do a Heisman campaign. People know what Chris Weinke's done, why would you send the flyer to someone?"
Nonetheless, Wilson admits that a second Heisman for the program would definitely be beneficial.
"Every recruit that walks through the doors will tell you that first, they want to see the national championship trophy and then they want to see the (Charlie Ward's) Heisman," he said. "They look at that thing like it's the Holy Grail."
Oklahoma spent less than $2,000 on Josh Heupel's campaign, according to Mike Prusinski, the school's sports information director. Didn't have to spend any more, Prusinski said, because the Sooners' number one ranking did wonders for Heupel's chances.
"Playing on national TV does more for Josh than what we can do here," he said. "That's one of the disadvantages that we have had related to the teams like Purdue, Virginia Tech and Florida State, which are playing on ESPN all the time. Josh has had almost no national games since coming to OU, but because we were No. 1, he got get plenty of attention on television."
Ron Rapoport, a Heisman voter and columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, has received very little mail this year (the only piece being a weekly Drew Brees e-mail). But he said that since he voted for the first time about 20 years ago, a good campaign has never really swayed his vote.
"The truth of the matter is that people can't take the voting seriously all year long," said Rapoport. "It's like the presidential election campaigns that start a year in advance. No one starts paying attention until the last month. For the Heisman, most people ignore it all until the last couple weeks, when they add up the numbers and consider things like Weinke had a great game and Heupel almost gets beat by Oklahoma State and that's it."
But that's the difference between today's Heisman race and what Thalman was dealing with in 1963. Thalman did the pamphlet for informational purposes. Now, all the information is out there.
"Today, candidates can be identified without CD-Roms and e-mails," he said. "Back in 1963, there was no ESPN, USA Today or national telecast of games."
"And one more thing," Thalman added. "Publicity men don't win the Heisman, athletes win the Heisman. Roger would have won if Elmer Fudd was his publicity man."
Darren Rovell covers sports business for ESPN.com and can be reached at Darren.Rovell@espn.com.
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