SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Heisman Hopefuls Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Houston. Well, the college football season is sneaking up on us fast, and that means the race for the 2026 Heisman Trophy is about to get started. This also means our podcast now heads into its fourth season and moves back to once per week as we once again shine the spotlight on the best players in the country, regardless of position, regardless of school. There's a few more changes to discuss, which you may have already noticed, but first we've changed our name to the Heisman Hopefuls Podcast. The show is just one of many pieces of content you'll see on a regular basis on our revamped Heisman YouTube channel. We're also going to have a show dedicated to the stories of our past winners called the Heisman Club Podcast, which I'll be a part of, as well as recurring features on Heisman history and insightful analysis and commentary from some of the smartest people in and around football. So just go to the channel right now and subscribe because you're about to see a lot of great storytelling in the coming weeks and months. Because we're still in preseason mode, our show today doesn't feature any Heisman candidates, but is instead about a topic pretty near and dear to my heart, Heisman campaigns. Multiple universities this year have already launched campaigns to promote their players for this prestigious honor. And that's just something I love to see. It's part of what makes the Heisman so unique. And a good campaign can really help a player win the Heisman. So coming up a little bit later on the show, I'm going to talk to associate athletic directors in charge of Heisman campaigns at both Ole Miss and SMU, and we're going to find out how modern promotions work. By the way, back when I was a sports information director at USC, I ran campaigns for a couple Heisman winners. First Carson Palmer in 2002, and then Matt Leinert in 2004. The funny thing about Palmer's situation is that USC as an institution was very reluctant to promote him as a Heisman candidate, up to and even after he threw for a school record five touchdowns and a big road win over Oregon in Game Eight. But I remember going upstairs to the football offices and Pete Carroll pulling me aside the Sunday after that game when he said, Hey, we got to do something for our guy. And that was all it took for us to come up with something on the spot for our guy. With my rudimentary Photoshop skills, I designed a golden ticket to a fictional TV show titled The Carson Show. This contained stats and notes on one side, and we mailed that out to as many voters as possible, or at least people we thought were voters. No one outside of the Heisman really has a surefire list of Heisman voters, so those mailers were pretty much crapsheets. It was a classic PR campaign. I remember talking to voters on the phone, making the case for why Carson was the most deserving. We didn't have social media. We had rudimentary email, a fax machine, maybe, and lots of envelopes for interns to seal. Carson, of course, did all the heavy lifting with his play on the field, and he beat out a pretty strong group of finalists by a solid margin in the end. But it did feel like momentum for his candidacy really shifted his way after the campaign kicked off. It seemed to make a splash with a lot of voters who were looking for a good story. And Carson's story that he was leading USC on a return to glory was a compelling one. I think the act of starting a campaign often has the effect of signaling to the Heisman electorate that a school has belief in a player. The Heisman campaign is a meaningful testament to a player's talent and character. By the way, you just heard me mention the Heisman electorate. You might be asking, what is the Heisman electorate? Well, the Heisman is simply put an election. The electorate for this particular election is composed of around 930 voters, depending on the year, and evenly distributed across six regions. And as with any electorate, they can usually be persuaded one way or another. Hence the campaigns, hence the hashtags, and so on. Perhaps the first noteworthy attempt to promote a player for the Heisman came in 1962, when Oregon State's Terry Baker became the first and only beaver to win the Heisman and the first player west of the Mississippi to claim the trophy. His sports information director mailed Baker's updated stats to the media each week. Considering that Baker won by less than 100 points over Jerry Stovall of LSU, it's conceivable that the hard work behind the scenes of keeping national sports writers abreast of his weekly stats put him over the top in the Heisen race. A year later, the folks at the Naval Academy's sports information department wanted to get the word out to the masses about their star quarterback, Roger the Dodger Staubak. More than three decades before email or the web, Navy sports info director Bud Thalman mailed 1,000 four-page pamphlets to the nation's sports media titled Simply Meet Roger Staubak. Stauback soon graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in Time and route to the 1963 Heisman Trophy, which he won in a landslide. Roger would have won if Elmer Fudd was a publicity man, said Thalman to ESPN's Darren Rebel in 2000. Since then, technology has enabled a lot more creativity, and we've seen everything from dumbbells to bobbleheads. Coming up next, my top 10 Heisman campaigns of all time. But first, let's talk to Ole Miss Associate Athletic Director Kyle Campbell about the campaigns of Trinidad Chamblist and Q1 Lacey. They are all Heisman Hopeful. For 2026, there's already a couple Heisman campaigns underway. SMU recently threw the name of its quarterback Kevin Jennings into the ring. And more recently, we saw Mississippi do the same for a pair of candidates, quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, and running back Kuwan Lacey. The program distributed buttons, stickers, and yard signs outside of Vott Hemingway Stadium, then made the items available for online purchase to help keep the attention on its star players. Took Ole Miss less than an hour to sell out its Heisman promotional uh bundle supply. So fans are definitely excited. And the man directing their campaign is Mississippi Associate Athletic Director for Brand Strategy, Kyle Campbell, who joins us now on the Heisman Trophy podcast. Kyle, thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Thanks, Chris, for having me.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, it's not often that a school has two legitimate Heisman candidates, but the Rebels have two guys who I think can really make some noise in the race. Tell me about the genesis for the idea of getting behind both of them and making the case that they are worthy candidates for the Heisman.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Right. Again, well, thanks for having me. First off, it it it takes a team here, right? And we're we're blessed. We've got a great um, we've got a great group of administrators and staff and content creators and a lot of people that have their hands on this, they're involved in it. Uh Drew Ingraham runs our external engagement unit. He's he's been a huge, huge asset in um in getting this off the ground and getting it to a point where we feel good about what we're doing. Ultimately, we're in the student athlete business, right? So, and and we're blessed that we've got two really, really good ones who are great players, but also great guys, right? And um, it's our job and it's our duty to support them, amplify their brands, um, and give them the best opportunity. So if they perform on the field, they have the opportunity to win their sport's biggest awards. So um, we've got a great opportunity um to do that for them, but also a chance to grow the brand of our program, of our team. Again, those we've got two great guys there that that represent this team. We've got a lot of great uh players on this team, but you know, those two guys obviously have developed very high profile brands, and uh they're great representatives for this team and and creating a lot of excitement going into this season.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah, there's tons of detractors uh for Heisman campaigns out there, even people in uh your profession. It used to be my profession as well. So I've been around a long time. A lot of people look down on that stuff, but it seems to me that the there's been a sea change in the attitude that you talk about brands, that there is a lot of downstream benefits for merely having a campaign, a vehicle to go out there and uh publicize your players, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah, I mean, it's great for their brands, right? And we're we're in this era of NIL and certainly campaigns like this. Um, if you want to call it a campaign, we don't, I'm not saying necessarily you you call it a campaign. From our standpoint, we want to we want to do right by our players, right? And give them all the support that they need. But listen, there's no doubt that the student athletes' personal brands matter today, right? They're being monetized, they're taking advantage of that. And it's it's actions like we're doing now with some of the promotional materials, the the content, um, some of the other actions were taken that it's going to help grow their brands and hopefully give them even more opportunities down the road.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Tell me about the promotional materials, how you came up with them, who, you know, who had the the germ of the idea to go in that direction, and what the what the uh sort of the concept is behind that.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Yeah, I mean, so to this point, some of our biggest activations, what starts on social media, right? So we've done a lot of social media activations. Uh, we're blessed we've got really good content creators, both on the athletic side and within our football program. Those guys are very collaborative and have created a lot of content going back to last year. And really a lot of it is is is aimed at humanizing these players, personalizing them, letting the general public learn more about them and create that emotional connection, whether it's showing Kewan hunting, right, or showing Trinidad as a fan at the Masters this year. Um, it's it's really uh it's really cool to be able to see those guys and their elements. And I think our our social media team and all of our folks on our external team have done a good job of trying to capture that, but also generate some really exciting, engaging fizzle reels, right? That that people can engage with. But then, yeah, on the on the marketing side, uh we we have done a lot of activations here uh locally, um, another number of fan events, whether we have a big fan fest um that took place in the spring. We're doing our caravan uh right now where it's our head football coach, Pete Golding, and our AD and players going around to various stops around, really around the whole country, um connecting with fans. Um we we had a big music festival here in the spring. We brought Kewan and Trinidad on stage to to introduce the the lead uh act, the uh the musical band that that led off that headlined that that event. So that was really cool. Uh then you mentioned the the yard signs, right? So we've rolled out a whole series of kind of old school political campaign um elements that uh fans are super excited about, right? It was it's it's yard signs, it's um it's buttons, it's stickers, it's all this different stuff, um, which again, they're locally aimed, but social media allows us to amplify those activations on a much larger scale. So even though, yeah, you you're you're seeing them really here locally, but nationally, people are kind of getting to see what we're doing. Yeah, and then as as we talked about the NIL activations, right? So surrounding all these marketing opportunities, you know, there's some autograph signings, uh, there's some public appearances, there's some other ways too that um these guys can benefit from that, not just in getting their name out there and growing their personal brand, but also from an NIL standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yeah. You mentioned uh Coach Pete Golding, he's a new coach for you guys, says he felt a responsibility to launch these campaigns. Now, last year you had a different coach who may or may not have had done the same thing had he stayed, which is which is all to ask, how much has it helped to have the strong backing of a coach in a campaign like this?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Well, listen, we've we've got a great leader and coach, and he's he certainly um has shown how dynamic he can be, right? He was the he was the big hit of SEC Media Days last week. Um and certainly he's gonna be very supportive of student athletes always. And listen, coaches in general, uh at least the ones that I've worked with, a lot of them, you know, they always talk about how you um you don't want to put undue pressure on a student athlete, right? So that's always a big part of it. Um, and then you don't want to create distractions. And that's that's certainly very understandable, right? And and with everything we do, we want to make sure we're not doing those things. Um we also have two guys, though, that have shown that pressure is nothing to them, right? I mean, I think we saw that in our in our CFP run a year ago, that these guys can handle pressure, and I think they're having fun with it, right? Like if you if you listen to Keywand or Trinidad at SEC Media Days last week, they'll be they'll tell you like um they're having a good time and they're enjoying all this and and trying to soak it up. So uh it's really cool to see. Um, again, it helps that these are just really good guys. You know, Coach Golding talks about kind of rule number one of our program is be a good dude. And these guys, these guys are great dudes. Seems like it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Uh and I guess I guess you might look at a situation like this on a case-by-case basis. Can the player handle it? What kind of background does he have? Going to the playoff, like you said, in that pressure situation, certainly all the media attention, the bright lights, uh, is going to be something that prepared them for what a campaign might look like down the road when we're getting down into November and the pressure uh increases. If you make it to New York, the the cameras in your face, uh, the constant questions, right? That's something that maybe you don't do this for a guy who is maybe you didn't go to the playoffs last year, right? Maybe you don't do it uh the same way, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it it's gonna look different from person to person based on how they can handle it. And um, and and again, a big part of this is always gonna get back to media, right? And national media opportunities and interviews and things like that. And these guys are really, really good in front of the media, really good at dealing with the media. Um, we certainly do everything we can to help them support them. Um, but with any kind of opportunity like this campaign, if you will, like this, we've got to leverage media opportunities, right? And these guys have been have done a lot of national interviews. They're gonna continue to do a lot of national interviews. We've had a lot of folks come in here in the spring, over the summer, um, and even some more coming up soon. You know, we're we're shooting them every day, but we're also trying to do it in a way where it's not interfering with their schedule. We're trying to get as much done in advance of camp so that when they get to camp, there's not a lot of distractions, a lot of things they have to deal with. And that's that's our job, right? You know, communications is our job to kind of help manage those opportunities, manage that schedule so that we're maximizing those opportunities, but we're not taking away from what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah. What was the reaction of these two guys when you told them uh they were gonna do they were gonna do a campaign?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Uh I'm not sure we ever sat down and said, hey, we're gonna do a campaign. It's kind of it's kind of been along the way. Hey, here's some things we're doing, here's some opportunities we're doing. And they've been really uh receptive of all of it. Um I think again, we're trying to make it fun for them, right? Like right now, those guys, you know, we're getting flooded with a request for those guys. And we want to make sure that um we're kind of focusing on those things, one that are gonna be the most impactful, but the ones that they're gonna enjoy the most. Um so they they've been really, really cool with everything because again, they're great guys and they're enjoying it. Um, and I think they're they're they're excited to see what this year holds, not just for them for the team in general. I mean, we've got a lot of high expectations. Everyone's really excited here at Ole Miss about what this year holds.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah, can you divulge some of your plans for down the road in the season? Do you have uh something for, you know, if they're at this position by November, here's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Well, I will tell you, we've we've got a couple really big ones coming up here in the next month that are much more national. Um one of I'm not gonna tell you what they are, but I will tell you one of them has never been done before. So uh we're really, really excited about a couple of these big activations coming up in the next month. And then, you know, as we've talked about, once you get into the season, ultimately this is about a first impression, right? And and getting their names out there. We all understand these awards are one on the field. So we'll you know we'll we'll see how the season plays out. But yeah, we certainly have some um certainly on the social or the digital side, website, social, that sort of stuff, some stuff that we would we would put into play um based on how the season goes. Um, but unless we had all the confidence in the world that both these guys are going to perform at a high level and have an opportunity to to you know be involved in the conversations for all these major awards.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yeah, yeah. And and you kind of have uh two bites of the apple, right? You can back two horses and uh whatever one uh kind of takes off, you just kind of go go in that direction, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Exactly. Yeah, it's uh it's it's a it's a it's a great um it's a great situation to have two guys of this caliber who who've proven on the field what they're capable of and um are just continuing to get better.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yeah. You know, and finally, you know, Mississippi has never had a Heisman winner. What kind of impact do you think the Heisman would have in the Oxford community?

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Uh, you know, it's we we've had some guys through the years, Archie, Eli. So certainly Ole Miss has had our fair share of great players. Um, and uh yeah, it would it would be pretty amazing. I I you know our fan excitement here is as high as I've ever seen it. Um, and I've been here a long time. So uh it's it's gonna be really, really fun, whether it's Heisman National Championship, whatever, whatever this season holds, um, we're we're really, really excited here in Oxford.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Well, Kyle Campbell, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the campaigns. We wish you luck and hope to talk to your guys as this season gets rolling, and we'll see you down the road. Sounds good. Thanks, Chris. You know, one thing I think people underestimate about the Heisman is its longevity as a college football icon. This is the 92nd year of Heisman, which was first awarded in 1935. In 1941, winner Bruce Smith of Minnesota said this in his acceptance speech. No college football player could ask for a greater honor or thrill than to have his name added to the list of Jay Burrwanger, Larry Kelly, Clint Frank, Davy O'Brien, Niall Kinnock, and Tom Harmon, who preceded me in winning this coveted Heisman trophy. That was just six years after the first Heisman. In other words, Heisman has been kind of a big deal for almost as long as it's been around. So it kind of made sense that eventually some schools wanted to do their best to ensure their players had a good shot of winning it. So now let's have a look at my top ten Heisman campaigns of all time. Kicking off the list with number 10, let's start with talking about how BYU tried to make Ty happen and did it ever. Ty Detmer had received enough votes to finish ninth in the 1989 balloting after throwing for a gazillion yards, but he wasn't exactly a huge favorite heading into 1990. But when Detmer started totaling huge numbers again, heads turned and the sports media noticed. Historians can't decide if BYU fans started wearing blue ties to support Detmer's Heisman bid before or after the athletic department mailed to the media blue cardboard ties that said the official Heisman tie with his stats on a fold-out. But whether it's the chicken or the egg, it was a fun and successful Heisman campaign in a vote that was close. Supporting a blue tie is one thing. Changing the way you pronounce your name is on a whole other level. But that's what Notre Dame's Joe Theisman did, or at least agreed to do in 1970. As the story goes, a reporter was watching practice and while pronouncing Joe's name correctly, said, There goes Thiesman, to which the Irish Sports Information Director replied, No, there goes Theisman, as in Heisman. And a campaign was born. Theizman was convinced to change the pronunciation of his last name to help promote the Heisman campaign, which saw him finish second behind Stanford's Jim Plunkett. In 2007, Missouri's Chase Daniel was a Heisman finalist, finishing fourth. The Tigers Athletic Department kicked off a campaign for Daniel in 2008 by ordering 2,500 Viewmasters with Daniel's images to send to Heisman voters and other sports media at a cost of about $25,000. He had another superb offensive year, but either the View Masters didn't hit right or there was just too much competition, as Daniel did not crack the top 10 in voting that year when Sam Bradford went home with the award. Number seven, Robert Griffin III. Baylor's communications department did a great job managing the campaign of Griffin, whose team lost three of four at one point. Andrew Luck of Stanford entered the year as the Heisman favorite, but Baylor released RG3 trading cards at several key points during the season, and using their social media strategy always seemed to be one step ahead of the competition. As the year went on, RG3 surged and he won the Heisman ahead of Luck, who became one of four two-time runners up in Heisman history. Number six, D'Angelo Williams. Memphis got really creative to promote talented tailback D'Angelo Williams in 2005. USC's Dredgie Bush was the favorite that year, but Williams was turning in pretty impressive highlight reel plays week in and week out. The Tigers Athletic Department tried to capitalize on that and produced and mailed 2,500 die cast model race cars featuring Williams as number 20, symbolizing the race for the Heisman. Word on the street is that it cost about $8 per car, but the department was able to recoup the expenses by selling another 1,500 cars to fans who love the idea. Williams finished seventh that year, but he certainly got a boost out of the buzz created by his campaign. In 2001, Oregon put a ton of resources behind promoting quarterback Joey Harrington. The Ducks Athletic Department spent in the realm of a quarter million dollars on an 80 by 100 foot billboard of Harrington erected across the street from Madison Square Garden, dubbing him Joey Heisman. Harrington made it to New York that fall, but as a finalist, finishing fourth. But I always thought that Oregon's commitment to promoting Harrington marked its transition to become one of the elite powers in college football. Back in 2004, blogs were all the rage. From politics to travel to food, everyone was blogging. I was working at the USC Athletic Department at the time, and we decided to make a blog for Matt Leinert. We called it first and 11. It was at the URL Matt Linertblog.com. You can't find it now, you'd have to go back to the Wayback Machine. It was really the first example of what we see now with college. Athletic departments where the departments are making their own news. Matt Leinert was interviewing people. I interviewed Snoop Dogg for the blog. So there was all kinds of cool things happening on the blog, very innovative. Probably didn't do a whole lot to help him. He was already the favorite going in, and he ended up winning the award pretty comfortably. But I do think from an innovation standpoint, it was kind of a groundbreaking campaign. Ryan Leif never panned out in the NFL, but he had a great college career at Washington State, and the creative minds in Pullman, Washington turned his last name into a great marketing plan. Sports Information Director Rod Commons kept it simple and built a campaign off his last name in 1997. To promote his strong-arm quarterback, Commons mailed envelopes with a single leaf to all the Heisman voters. One solitary leaf, raked from the grounds of a local Pullman golf course by Commons' sports information staff. Nothing else. Commons sent these out in October, and the buzz was well received. Now, this was a packed Heisman race, and Leif was going up against eventual winner Charles Woodson and second place finisher Pate Manning. Leaf finished third ahead of Randy Moss, and in that quartet of finalists, that's not a bad accomplishment. In 2011, Northwestern launched a Heisman campaign on behalf of its quarterback Dan Pursa entitled Pursa Strong. It was inspired by Pursa's approach to weight trading. It included mailing seven-pound dumbbells, he wore number seven, to media members and urging the media members to work out hard this football season, stay away from the press box buffets, and keep an eye on Northwestern's quarterback. I gotta tell you, I personally loved this mailing. I had these dumbbells for years, and they were very good at holding open doors. The greatest Heisman Trophy campaign of all time came in 1977. It was probably the simplest. There weren't a lot of bells and whistles, no bobbleheads, no mailers. It was really just one stat. Texas SID Jones Ramsey created the term Yards After Contact. He and his staff would sit and watch the games on a Sunday and tally up the amount of times that running back Earl Campbell would get hit by a player and gain more yards. It was calculated that Campbell had over a thousand yards after contact that year. This is the kind of thing that really demonstrated what a one-man show he was. This was a killer stat that allowed voters to really sink their teeth into Campbell's candidacy. It really allowed them to quantify just what he meant to his team. Even on plays where the offensive line didn't block as well, he was still able to move forward, get yards, and really do a positive thing for his team. And of course, this was a new stat at the time, and we still use it to this day. We still see yards after contact as a great example of player determination, the ability to power three tackles. That stat is still influential to this day. And that's why this is the greatest Heisman campaign of all time. Back on July 13th, Southern Methodist University launched a Heisman campaign on behalf of its senior quarterback, Kevin Jennings. Jennings, who is a Dallas native and who came to SMU by way of South Oak Cliff High, has thrown for 7,709 yards and 55 touchdowns in 39 games overall for the Mustangs and led them to the college football playoff in 2024 in their ACC debut. Last year he threw for 3,641 yards and 26 touchdowns. These are numbers and accomplishments the school hasn't seen for quite a while. It's no wonder they are calling him the King of Dallas. Clark Williams is SMU's senior associate athletic director for brand advancement and strategic communications. And he joins us now to talk about the Kevin Jennings for Heisman campaign. Welcome, Clark. Thanks, Chris.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

So tell me the genesis for this idea to run a Heisman campaign on Kevin's behalf.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Sure, absolutely. Well, look, it it really starts and ends with Kevin, uh, not just as a player. Certainly he has the accolades to earn this endeavor, uh, but as a leader who he is on and off the field in the locker room and really around SMU's campus, right? He really is a statesman for this university and is so proud to represent it. And frankly, because of that, not just the on-field success, but because of that, he deserves this type of campaign. Um, you know, I'm also fortunate to have a head coach in Rhett Lashley who really understands marketing and branding and more importantly, really likes it. So, you know, pretty early on in the offseason, you know, Rhett and I were talking and realized, you know, this is this is something we want to do and really something Kevin deserves. Um, Kevin never came to us and said, hey, I want this, but but his on-field play certainly warrants it, but his character warrants it even more. Um, and you know, I'm really fortunate to have a team here at SMU with uh, you know, Brian Ullman, Lauren Adee, Emilio, Chris, Carter, uh, the list goes on and on that that really have a strategic ability to think um outside the box, but also, you know, are stewards and students of this industry. And, you know, we put our heads together and came up with a pretty good idea. And Kevin was sort of that executive producer, right? We didn't we didn't bog him down in meetings, we didn't make him join teams or put anything on his calendar. Uh, but when it was come, uh when it you know when it was time to present some ideas, we ran it by Kevin and he's a creative guy and he got to sign off on what it was.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah, I saw that coach is calling him Mr. SMU. Uh as far as just figuring out what the campaign would be and what he could handle, how much did you factor in just that very thing, like you said, his connection to the local community, his ability to handle the pressure of doing more media interviews during the year? Was that a big factor that tempered or even expanded what you uh had originally planned?

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Sure. And I think one thing we also realized is that Kevin deserved more than just, you know, a numeric device campaign, right? And more than just putting a number in the word Heisman and calling it that. And um, you know, that's been so prevalent across the industry and a bit of a rinse and repeat, but we really thought he deserved it's a a campaign that had its own identity and that was really authentic to him. And uh, you know, Kevin's a a quarterback who grew up in Dallas, played in Dallas, took his high school to a place that had never been, then stayed in the local in the area to go to the College of Dallas, and uh took SMU to places it's never been. And he stayed here through and through. And and you know, this this is an era where where players come and go, and and that's certainly warranted. And uh Kevin has has been a part of this community from the start, and and he really earned the moniker King of Dallas, not necessarily because he's the greatest athlete in Dallas history, but because his story is the most authentically Dallas. So I think when we realized that we wanted Dallas to play a key role in it, um, and his story is so truly Dallas. Um and I think also we we took advantage of the fact that Dallas is a national brand in of itself, right? On a lot of these campaigns, sometimes you have to weigh going local versus going national. Um, but we're really fortunate to be in a market that allows us to do both simultaneously.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah. I can imagine what the brainstorming sessions were like. I mean, I think of Dallas, I think of Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Cowboy Chew Leaders, Dallas the TV show, which is, you know, before some people's times. Uh, but uh uh what were some of the ideas that maybe uh you guys bandied about, maybe didn't pick, but were thinking about?

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Well, yeah, I won't I won't highlight the the too much of the graveyard, uh, because obviously we're much more proud of where we ended up than where we didn't go. Um but I think you know, a lot of us, a lot of what we wanted was something that stood out, right? Um so with that goal in mind, there's always gonna be some uh out-of-the-box ideas, but you know, we really wanted something that was that was not just authentic, but innovative and cool, right? For lack of a better term, we wanted something that was cool, something that people would notice, something that would stand out, something that when it crossed the desk of someone who's not an SMU fan or even an ACC fan or even in the Dallas Fort Worth area would would, you know, stand out to them. Um and and so I think with that in mind, we cast a Y net into things that were unique, things that were innovative. Um, you know, we used a lot of inspiration from cool brand campaigns, not just in the Heisman history, but across Nike, Adidas, you know, major brands. You know, we we looked into things that commercial partners or pardon me, that corporate uh campaigns have looked like with Apples, things like that, those types of brands too. So we cast a really wide net. I'm sure that first uh ideation session had some pretty outlandish ideas. But um once we really honed in, we realized, you know, this is something that really checked all the boxes.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Having coach be such, like you mentioned, such a good marketer, and but you know, being aware of the importance of that, uh, I can imagine having a coach who is supportive of a campaign has got to mean a lot because, for example, uh you get to a situation where there's an interview request with a big media entity, but maybe there is this other kind of thing pulling him another direction, and and it's gonna be up to the coach to say, you know, this is important too. Uh, how much did that help to have someone who understood what you guys were getting at? Because some coaches are just like, I just want to play football, let the chips fall where they may, none of this matters. But other coaches seem to have, I guess, maybe more of an updated uh uh outlook on this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Aaron Powell Well, the one of the best qualities of Rhett is he's such a champion, not just of the university and his staff and and our colleagues, but of each and every player. Right. And and being a champion of a player isn't just meaning, oh, I'm gonna do this campaign for you. It's sometimes I'm going to, you know, wave the banner myself. Um, it's not just Kevin out there attached to these things. It's Rhett getting on ACC Network or ESPN or The Athletic or so many different national outlets and local outlets alike, and and really championing Kevin uh as well as the program and as well as the person and as well as the quarterback and as well as the locker room leader and all these different things. And and he's he's been really great about that, not just for Kevin, but for so many different student athletes. Um I think really for Rhett, I'll give him kudos too, because it extends beyond just football, right? You know, he's he's always at volleyball matches, he's at soccer matches, he's at basketball games, you know, he he really is that kind of statesman uh as well and and understands um you know the the value his voice brings. And and to these campaigns, it's it's uh it's one of the most valuable assets we had in launching it was Rao Ashley.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah. You mentioned earlier the innovation and some of the elements that you guys are bringing to the table that are inspired by other campaigns. Uh when it all boils down to it, there's 929 voters out there who are going to make a decision uh down the road uh on who is the most worthy to win the Heisman. What kind of innovations are you talking about that will that will get uh Kevin Jennings' accomplishments in front of their eyes?

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah. So I think, you know, the way we viewed this campaign was three-tiered, right? The first tier is what you saw in um July when we launched it, right? We we had a couple different moments of that week that really celebrated Kevin and launched the campaign. Obviously, the the start of the week, we did your traditional press release as well as a lot of press material. And our football creative did this incredible cinematic piece that you know rivals Christopher Nolan in my mind, in terms of uh the scope and success it had. Um and, you know, following that, we we we really honed in on keeping the momentum going. So later in that week, we announced the Kevin Jennings Recovery Center, and Kevin and Rhett were a part of that. And obviously the focus was the recovery center, but the Heisman campaign was so fresh on everyone's mind, we viewed this as a second bite at the Apple. Later that Friday, we went to Charlotte for ACC Football Media Days. Again, we had a lot of fun with it. We made t-shirts. Rhett wore it under his suit and opened it Superman style to showcase the campaign moniker. Uh, we handed out shirts to media, we handed out one-sheeters that were high quality. Um, we really took advantage of all that Charlotte and having so much national and local media under one roof had to offer. Um, you know, a week later, Kevin went out, threw out the first pitch of the Texas Rangers game, again, really integrating into the sports landscape of the Metroplex, which is so robust. You know, we're really lucky to have a not just such a massive market, but a market that adores sports, and sports plays such a crucial role in the the culture of this area. Um and then, you know, before the start of the season, I won't give away too much, but we're gonna make sure we make another splash leading into uh a big time matchup on uh ESPN on Monday night, Labor Day uh against Florida State. Um and that'll be, you know, Kevin will get a chance to show uh show the world that he's he's worthy of this uh accolade uh from the get-go. And then, you know, later in the what we kind of consider as tier three is you know assessing how how things are going in the season, right? A lot of people wait to launch a Heisman campaign week six, week seven. Maybe they think their individual, their student athlete is worthy of it, but they don't want to jinx it or anything like that. As far as I'm concerned, Kevin's going to go out and ball out and do what he does, regardless of what we do from a marketing PR side. It's our job, and it's really incumbent upon us to support him, advance his brand, and and and market him, frankly. And I think in this age of college athletics, athlete marketing is program marketing. It is football marketing, it's it's university marketing, right? We what we do for Kevin obviously you know celebrates Kevin and showcases Kevin, but it also gets SMU uh at the forefront of the conversation, not just as a football program, but as an athletics program as a whole, as a university, as a you know, as a as a you know a major uh tint pole in the culture of Dallas.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Yeah. It it kind of shows also having institutional support behind a player, it's kind of sends signals, right? It sends signals to uh national media that SMU thinks that this is a player worthy of consideration. And uh, you know, SMU has had a long way back from the probation. And uh, you know, there's this wonderful narrative uh that a lot of Heisman campaigns benefit from, which is what I call the return to glory narrative, right? And you see every once in a while a player from a school that hasn't won a Heisman in a while or they haven't been nationally relevant in a while. And if that player could be seen as engineering a return to that glory, uh the discerning voter often rewards that. Did you guys think about that aspect at all?

SPEAKER_02 36:33

You know, I don't know if we we thought about it from that singular point, but what we really recognize is, you know, the better the story, the more enticed the voter, candidly. Um and, you know, you look at recent Heisman winners, and each of them had a story on and off the field, right? Last year's winner had such a unique personality uh off the field that really, you know, in this in this era complements uh Mendoza's success on the field last year. And and we recognize that uh, you know, having someone you want to vote for sometimes helps sweeten it a bit. Um, you know, Kevin has to go out and do what he does best to to earn the accolade, but uh we really think Kevin has a story that is unique um and and special and and you know when when you think about SMU, we have such a unique history as well. Um we we kicked around the tires on messaging about how Doke Walker is our our last winner and we're going to you know the we're going to Doke and Tallahassee to start Kevin's uh campaign. Um there's there's there's a lot of things that we you know uh we kind of honed in on, but maybe didn't, you know, highlight as much as other elements of the campaign. But again, I think, you know, we consider ourselves storytellers. You know, that's such an overused word in our industry, but um what what I really think a storyteller does best is hone in on the actual stories that are there in front of you. And Kevin has an actual authentic story uh that's worth telling.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Yeah. Um one other underrated, I think, benefit you guys have, uh ironically, from the conference realignment is you guys are you're situated in Dallas, but you're a member of the ACC. So you go on the road in the ACC, you're going up and down the East Coast. If you were in the Big 12, for example, uh, or the old conferences where all your schools were in Texas or in the region there, chance to go out and showcase your talents to uh to uh like other regions, uh other regional media you're playing on the East Coast, you're getting great exposure uh for Kevin uh on that side of the country.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Yeah. And you know, look, people pine about conference realignment and expansion and uh all these different things regularly, but one benefit does exist in the marketing side of things, right? I mean, uh SMU is able to exist up and down the East Coast. Uh, we're able to market ourselves across the West Coast, right? We're able to uh, you know, showcase ourselves from Massachusetts to Palo Alto, and and and that really matters, right? That that gets us on the forefront of the conversation in so many different regions, um, as opposed to being hyper-local, to your point.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Yeah. Um you mentioned Doke Walker earlier. Ricky Williams famously wore his number during his Heisman year in 1998. Any any thought about doing that, or is that something that you're keeping under wraps?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Aaron Powell Well, look, it's the nice thing about a Heisman campaign being launched at this point is we haven't even hit the field once yet. So uh we've we've created uh a great campaign, uh, and and you know, my colleagues have have done a wonderful job in getting it off the ground, but we've also allowed for enough real estate and wiggle room to uh to insert some new creative ideas as the season unfolds. So I won't give them all away, but I do feel confident that we're gonna keep this momentum going pretty strong.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Cool. You know, it's been 78 years since uh Doug Walker won. Uh there have been a few other Mustangs who've been uh factoring in the vote. Eric Dickerson, most recent, 1982, finished third. What do you think a Heisman would mean to the SMU community?

SPEAKER_02 40:10

I mean, it's probably hard to put into words or to find the uh a succinct way of putting how meaningful it would be. Um but I guess what I would say is it's it would be a bit of a validation for all the hard work that the entire SMU community has put into SMU athletics as a whole in the last few years, right? There's there's a level of alignment at this university in terms of athletics that's not often seen. Um, from President Hartzhold to our athletic director, Damon Evans, to donor base, fan base, student athletes, students, you know, individuals in the community, et cetera. Um so part of that is because a lot of these individuals who have put in a lot of work, time, and hours to get SMU to this place, right? I think SMU did a wonderful job of taking advantage of the ACC opportunity from the get-go, right? It wasn't, you know, there wasn't too much of a transition period from the American to the ACC. And in fact, SMU was in conference championship game in year one and made the CFP. So I really just think, you know, Kevin being able to bring home this hardware is really just a validation of the hard work so many different people in the SMU community have put.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Well, uh football's just around the corner. Clark Williams, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this campaign. We wish you luck with it. Maybe we'll see you in New York at some point, and we look forward to chatting with Kevin at some point in the season.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

Yes, absolutely. Well, I appreciate all the time, and I appreciate you guys giving uh Kevin a platform to show who he is on and off the field.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Anytime. He's welcome anytime. Well, I hope you enjoyed our deep dive into Heisman campaigns of your. Special thanks to Ole Miss Associate Athletic Director Kyle Campbell and SMU Associate Athletic Director Clark Williams for chatting with us about their upcoming campaigns. Next week, we'll be talking with Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr, talking week zero, and looking down the road as we get ready to dive into the 2026 college football season. Don't forget to subscribe to Heisman on YouTube and follow the Heisman Hopefuls podcast wherever you get your podcast. We'll see you all next Thursday.