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By GREG AUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 10, 2001
Readers with relatively low tolerances for hype, hyperbole and highfalutin nonsense, beware: Heisman campaigns are already in season.
The 2001 politicking shifts into another gear this week with preseason media gatherings, and the only thing missing from this year's class is a cool domain name, like last year with Deuce McAllister's thedeuceisloose.com and LaDainian Tomlinson's ltfor2000.com.
The propaganda for this fall's front-runners, by comparison, is disappointingly bland.
The University of Miami's site, hurricanesports.com, leads with a picture of quarterback Ken Dorsey on the cover of ESPN the Magazine and a Q&A offering everything from his favorite meal to favorite summer movie. Oregon State (osusports.com) gives the same treatment to running back Ken Simonton, with his picture on the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated on its football page.
His slogan, "Simonton Says," is better than that for Clemson's Woodrow Dantzler, ("A Man With a Plan") who is pictured on an orange sliding board with smiling youngsters from the local YMCA in a personal gallery at clemsontigers.com.
"I'm treating it like I don't care," Dantzler tells his own promotional machine in one of 13 stories on the "News" page of his Heisman section.
An early leader online might be Indiana quarterback Antwaan Randle El, whose promoters sent out about 1,000 mouse pads to voters and sports writers last month, touting him as "College Football's Most Exciting Player."
"I think he's gotten the most excited about the mouse pads," said Todd Starowitz, the school's football media relations director. "It's probably the only gimmicky thing we've done, but we're trying to find a niche for him out there."
Other sites are keeping their campaigns quiet -- Northwestern (nusports.com) is admirably low-key about tailback Damien Anderson, the leading vote-getter in a poll at Sportsline.com.
Despite three potential candidates, one school you won't find using the H-word is Florida, whose sports information department did not use the word "Heisman" in promoting Danny Wuerffel five years ago until the night he won the award. Another Heisman winner insists UF players help themselves solely on the field.
"Coach (Steve) Spurrier does not believe in that (hype)," sports information director John Humenik said. "His philosophy is you go out, do your job, and if you're successful, all those things take care of themselves."
And if they don't, schools always can add more to the campaign between now and December. Miami has registered kendorsey11.com and plans to unveil the site in time for the season opener.
TID-BYTES: The jersey worn by Wayne Gretzky in his final NHL game is up for auction at lelands.com, with bidding at $25,000. The scrolldown options allow fans to bid as high as $10.1-million. ... After beating the Yankees on Tuesday, the Rays made a surprising appearance among the top 20 sports "Buzz Movers" this week at buzz.yahoo.com, which tracks sudden changes in popularity of terms typed into Yahoo's search engine. Pete Rose tops the list, followed by pole vaulter Stacy Draglia and sprinter Marion Jones.
-- E-mail staff writer Greg Auman at auman@sptimes.com.