Oct. 3, 2006

By Tom Hart

Special to CSTV.com

To gimmick or not to gimmick, that is the question.

	TOM HART Tom Hart calls football play-by-play for CSTV and is a contributor to CSTV.com. E-mail here!

        ---   Column Archive   --- FOOTBALL 1/4: Traveling Party 12/19: That Ill Feeling 12/12: Not For Everyone 12/5: Buckeyes Take The Cake 11/29: Don't Count Out Missouri 11/21: Giving Thanks 11/14: Guarantees And Gestures 11/8: Woe Be A Missouri Fan 11/1: Don't Buy The Bulldogs 10/24: Loony Weekend In Loony Year 10/17: Bulls On To Something 10/10: Magic Reappearing Act 10/3: Making Sense - And A Ballot - Of It All 9/26: Processing The Process 9/19: Behind Closed Doors 9/12: Poll Questions 9/5: TCU's Going Against The Odds 8/29: All Roads Lead To Commerce 10/30: H Is For Home 10/13: Like Father Like Son? 10/3: Wolfe in a Sheep's Conference 9/14: The Rivalry Game 9/7: There's Something About Rivalries 8/29: Are You Experienced?

DeAngelo Williams was a dark horse Heisman candidate for Memphis last year. Playing at a school whose basketball team gets more media attention during the course of a week than the football team does in a season, the Memphis sports information department got creative in their promotion for DeAngelo's Heisman hopes.

Sports Information Director Jennifer Rodrigues came up with a sure fire attention getter: a model stock car in the heart of the NASCAR-crazy South. Not only was it a full size stock car wrapped in Memphis blue and his No. 20, but Heisman voters received a miniature model to occupy their desk.

Williams' Heisman dreams were stalled Nov. 12 at Tennessee, when he never got out of the pits due to an ankle injury. He finished seventh in the balloting.

This season, Northern Illinois' Garrett Wolfe is tearing up the competition, but the best you'll get is some timely emails and a sharp looking website. Northern Illinois sports information director Donna Turner and head coach Joe Novak went old school with this campaign.

"He's not coming into the season unknown", Turner explained.  "Coach Novak felt strongly that Garrett's numbers could speak for themselves. After all, if the Washington Post comes out and says that Garrett Wolfe deserves Heisman consideration, doesn't that mean a lot more than if coach Novak or Donna Turner says it?"

Don't misunderstand the strategy. If the athletic department at NIU felt that cars, t-shirts, hats and hot sauce could bring home the trophy they would be all for it. Michael "The Burner" Turner got the hot sauce treatment in 2003, and netted a grand total of 3 votes and an 18^th place finish.

Call the Carolina Panthers and ask DeAngelo; it can be nearly impossible for a player from outside of the BCS to get the national media attention necessary to win the Heisman, no matter how much the school spends on publicity campaigns.

The man in front of Michael Turner with the San Diego Chargers might be the best example of that.

LaDainian Tomlinson finished fourth in the Heisman balloting!  A distant fourth at that, behind winner Chris Weinke of Florida State and Josh Heupel from Oklahoma.  TCU was 10-1, ranked in the Top 15, and LT went over 200 yards five times, including a 406 yard afternoon against UTEP.  That's not impressive?  TCU was ranked 13^th, so somewhere voters thought they were a good team. If you consider Tomlinson's WAC opponents overmatched, how do you compare a 28-year old former professional baseball player to his ACC opponents (pre-ACC expansion by the way)? 

LT led the nation in rushing two straight years, and turned in an incredible 2,158 yard performance his last year in Ft. Worth. That total marked the fourth-highest single-season total EVER.  A distraught Tomlinson admitted afterward that a TCU back had no chance to win the award if he couldn't crack the Top 3.

As for Wolfe, he's averaging 236 yards per game and has scored 11 touchdowns. He rushed for 171 yards against Ohio State (his season low) and 353 yard against Ball St. (his season high).

Not only does he put up big numbers against MAC opponents, but he does the same against Big Ten foes.  Last year, he went for 245 against Northwestern and 148 at Michigan. He's rushed for 100 yards or more in 19 of the last 23 games that he's played in, including nine 200-plus yard games, and two of 300 or better.

In the match up with the Wolverines in `05, Michigan's big-time back Mike Hart rushed for 117 yards against the Huskies, and Hart went for 116 against common opponent Central Michigan.

How about these notes straight from the NIU website:

- Wolfe has now rushed for 1,181 yards on the season, which gives him more yards in the first five games of a season than any other player in Division I-A history.

- In surpassing the 1,000-yard mark for rushing yards in just the fifth game of the season, Garrett Wolfe tied an NCAA record set nine times previously by eight different players. Those players were: Ed Marinaro (Cornell, 1971, 1,026 yards), Ricky Bell (USC, 1976, 1,008), Marcus Allen (USC, 1981, 1,136), Ernest Anderson (Oklahoma State, 1982, 1,042), Barry Sanders (Oklahoma State, 1988, 1,002), Troy Davis (Iowa State, 1995, 1,001 and 1996, 1,047), Byron Hanspard (Texas Tech, 1996, 1,112) and Ricky Williams (Texas, 1998, 1,086).

- Only 6 Division I-A teams (not including Northern Illinois) are out-rushing Garrett Wolfe, who is now averaging 236.2 yards per game rushing. The single-season record for rushing average is 238.9 by Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State in 1988.

- Wolfe is also chasing Sanders' single-season mark of 2,628 yards. He needs 1,448 yards to break that record, or 206.7 rushing yards per game in NIU's remaining 7 games.

- Wolfe, who owns four of the top 11 rushing performances in the nation this season, is averaging an amazing 9.3 yards per carry on the year. He has nine runs of 46 yards or longer.

- With a career rushing average of 176.7 yards per game, Wolfe is currently on pace to break the NCAA record for career yards per game, set by Cornell's Ed Marinaro from 1969-71. Marinaro averaged 174.6 yards per game in 27 career outings. Wolfe currently has 4,417 rushing yards on 625 carries (a 7.1-yards per carry average).

And now from the Debbie Downer Department, I'm here to tell you that Wolfe has no chance at winning college football's most prestigious award.

Name a Heisman winner from a non-BCS conference team. Houston's Andre Ware in 1989?  Nope, the Cougars played in the Southwest Conference then. 

How about inaugural winner Jay Berwanger in 1935? Even before the BCS was invented the big money folks had a grip on the hardware, as the University of Chicago was a member of the Big Ten.

Navy's Roger Staubach deserves consideration. However, once you figure in a kind of Super Conference inflation, the Midshipmen of 1963 would be considered a quality independent in the same category of Notre Dame. 

The same could be said for Army in that era. Outside of the service academies and the media darling Ivy League, the only Heisman to be awarded to a player outside of these conferences was Ty Detmer from BYU. Not only was Brigham Young just a few years removed from a national championship and all of the national media attention that goes with it, but Detmer was well known enough to finish in the Top Ten three times during his career as a Cougar.

The closest a player from a non-BCS conference came was Marshall Faulk in 1992, finishing behind Gino Torretta of Miami. Although Miami snuck by a mediocre Arizona team by a final score of 8-7 - the first of three straight games decided by three or fewer points - the `Canes hammered San Diego State 63-17 head to head.

In 1993, Faulk slipped to fourth. That same year NIU's Lashawn Johnson finished sixth, and Trent Dilfer came in at 9^th out of Fresno State. That was a banner year for non-BCS contenders.

In 1994 Steve McNair out of tiny Alcorn State finished third in the voting.  Who did more with less, McNair, or Oklahoma's Jason White?

And that's what gets me. Whether you play in the MAC or the SWAC, to overcome the obstacles necessary to compete with the big boys is an amazing accomplishment. Not only did all of these guys put up huge numbers, but they did it without much help. 

Do you think Alcorn State's complementary running game took pressure off McNair and gave him more time to throw?  Were Torreta and White the best players in their award winning seasons, or the headliners on the best teams?

Jeff Blake finished seventh (1991) in the race while playing in the ECAC. That's right, the ECAC. What, you've forgotten about the East Coast Athletic Conference? Blake was putting up insane numbers at East Carolina.

Joe Dudek of Plymouth State finished ninth in 1985, thanks in large part to some early publicity that included sharing a Sports Illustrated cover with the likes of Bo Jackson, Chuck Long and Robbie Bosco.   

Even recent players from outside of the BCS who made a run had great players with them. Marshall's I-AA and MAC dominance in the 90's gave the Thundering Herd great publicity. Chad Pennington finished 5^th in 1995. In 1997, Randy Moss had a solid - yet distant - fourth place finish. Byron Leftwich came in 6^th in 2002.

The bottom line: if you want to prove yourself as a national contender, you have to get the job done while you have the national spotlight. The Huskies will be on TV often over their next few games, but the big trip comes when Northern Illinois visits Iowa's Kinnick Stadium on Oct. 28 to take on the Hawkeyes. Assuming Wolfe keeps the numbers going against MAC opponents, he'll need to run all over the Hawkeyes. It will truly come down to one game.  It's a shame the Huskies don't play more games against the Big Ten.

This week we make a trip to the world of vinegar-based barbeque: eastern North Carolina. Al Groh's Virginia Cavaliers take on the Pirates of East Carolina in a Saturday night contest on CSTV. UVA has some real quarterback issues, and now is the time to get things straightened out. The Cavs are coming off an everything-went-right blitzing of Duke. Can they keep the heat on ECU?

Skip Holtz is building a program from the ground up in Greenville. The James Pinkney-Aundrae Allison combo is legit one, but the Pirates will need to shore up their defense if they want to contend for the wide open C-USA East crown.