In the Heisman race, the Tar Heels will let Sam Howell’s play speak for itself
The unofficial Sam Howell campaign for the Heisman Trophy kicks off Wednesday in Charlotte at the ACC’s annual two-day media event, where the North Carolina quarterback will be as much the center of attention as any other player or even new commissioner Jim Phillips.
To bolster Howell’s candidacy for the award — Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler is the betting favorite, but Howell’s right there with him — the university has prepared a massive publicity campaign consisting of: almost nothing.
No posters, no notebooks, no billboards, no bobbleheads, no gifts, no gimmicks. If Howell wins the Heisman, he’ll do it on his own. Which is exactly how both the quarterback and Mack Brown want it.
“Just as we did with Ricky Williams at Texas, we consider this a team award,” Brown said earlier this month. “If we do well, Sam will do well.”
There are two subtle messages buried within that absence of messaging, one about Howell and one about the Tar Heels.
Just as Howell has signed with an agent to handle any endorsement deals but has yet to actually sign any, a Heisman publicity campaign isn’t really his style. Despite being the focus of the team for two seasons and a national star going into his third, he hasn’t exactly embraced the public spotlight, although he certainly hasn’t shied away either.
He’s done most of his talking on the field. The same will be said of his Heisman candidacy. There’s nothing surprising or unusual about that.
If anything, the Tar Heels’ low-key approach to Howell’s award chances says more about them.
The Jordan Love notebooks and Ed Oliver bobbleheads other schools have sent to Heisman voters to promote their players came from programs — Utah State and Houston, respectively — that needed to elevate their players onto the national radar. That’s certainly not an issue at North Carolina.
But programs as big as Clemson (for Deshaun Watson) and Oregon (for Joey Harrington) have employed various gimmicks and advertising buys for candidates in the past. There was no bigger star in college football at the time than Johnny Manziel, but Texas A&M pushed hard for his Heisman — and successfully, if not the second time around.
North Carolina did set up in-depth interviews for Howell with national and local media outlets this summer, including The News & Observer, to make sure his story is told. Even if these were deliberately curated to ensure his visibility remains high, that’s really nothing out of the ordinary for a star player, Heisman candidate or not.
There’s a statement of intent buried in there, that the Tar Heels are too big and too good to mess around with promoting their star player for the Heisman. That’s a carefully calculated message not only to the locker room, but to the ACC. They’re above such petty hijinks, or at least they hope to be.
The silence, on this front, speaks volumes.
None of that will change the amount of attention or the level of expectations surrounding Howell. When the Coastal Division appears before the media on Wednesday, only Miami quarterback D’Eriq King will compare in terms of status, and questions for him may be as much about the marketing company he founded as they will be about football.
But when the preseason all-ACC teams are released next week, Howell figures to be the preseason player of the year — the Triangle’s first since 2005, which is as far back as the ACC has records.
North Carolina is likely to be the Coastal Division favorite. If Howell and the Tar Heels live up to those expectations, everything else will take care of itself, including his Heisman chances — better than a bobblehead ever could.
