It’s the Academy Award of the college football world.

Get it, and you have it made — like a hotel on Boardwalk, a royal flush on the flop or a trophy bass on the first cast of the morning.

It’s the Heisman Trophy, one of the most famous statues in the sports world. Each year, someone wins his own bronze man, complete with the stiff-arm pose that gets mocked every day in sandlot football fields by children looking to be the next Eddie George, Charlie Ward or Carson Palmer.

Campuses from ocean to ocean have celebrated their own Heisman winners, but Kansas University hasn’t received an invitation yet. KU really has had just one close call, when quarterback David Jaynes finished fourth in the 1973 race after passing for 2,131 yards and 13 touchdowns for the 8-4 Jayhawks.

KU doesn’t know what a Heisman Trophy does to a school, but its opponent today sure does. When the Jayhawks line up against Oklahoma at noon in Norman, Okla., they’ll be focused on making sure the reigning Heisman Trophy winner doesn’t get the better of them.

OU quarterback Jason White was the 2003 Heisman recipient, beating out Pittsburgh wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Mississippi QB Eli Manning after passing for 3,846 yards and 40 touchdowns in just 14 games.

White isn’t mentioned too often among front-runners this year, but Oklahoma once again can’t escape the Heisman hype. This time around, it’s sensational freshman running back Adrian Peterson, who has rushed for 901 yards in six games and is drawing comparisons to former great Eric Dickerson of a generation ago.

White was Oklahoma’s first Heisman Trophy winner in more than 25 years, and the Sooner Nation soon found two things out as a result: Winning the award takes a lot more than a good season on the field, and winning the award does a lot more than bring a little bronze statue to a sports-crazy campus.

The history of Heisman

It's a common misconception that the man who posed for the Heisman Trophy was the statue's namesake, John W. Heisman. In fact, Ed Smith, a New York University standout, posed for the trophy. Oklahoma, which will entertain Kansas University today, has had four Heisman winners. KU has none.

Back in 1935, the Downtown Athletic Club of New York City, Inc., created a trophy to be given to the “Outstanding College Football Player in the United States.”

The DAC decided to name the award after one of its own, John W. Heisman, who became the first athletic director of the DAC a few years prior

to the creation of the trophy. Heisman played football at Brown and Penn and later had great success coaching between 1892 and 1927, stopping at such places as Auburn, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Rice.

A common misconception is that the famous bronze man with the leather helmet is John W. Heisman, but that’s not accurate.

The DAC picked a famous sculptor to create a unique trophy that stood out from the run-of-the-mill designs being passed out in those days, and he found a model in New York University standout Ed Smith. The now-famous stance Smith posed for was approved, and the statue — which measures 14 inches long, 14 inches high and weighs 25 pounds — soon became a mainstay in sports culture.

Jay Berwanger of Chicago was the first winner of the award, but he nabbed the honor when it was still called the “DAC Trophy.” It wasn’t until after Berwanger won his little bronze man that the trophy was renamed in honor of Heisman.

The hype of Heisman

As the years passed, the aura of the Heisman Trophy slowly grew to unimaginable heights, and the hype grew accordingly.

The promoting of young talent goes way back. KU did it with Jaynes in its 1973 media pamphlet — which the quarterback graced the cover of — saying “Jaynes enters his senior year a definite contender for All-American and All-Big Eight honors and a realistic candidate for the Heisman Trophy.”

The hype vehicles became more unique as the years passed. Desmond Howard of Michigan promoted himself by striking the Heisman pose after scoring a touchdown in 1991. He was flagged for excessive celebration, but Howard won his own bronze statue at the end of the year.

These days, athletic departments spend big bucks with aspirations of getting their candidate on the lips of anyone willing to talk about them.

In 2001, the Oregon athletic department reportedly spent $250,000 on a 10-story billboard at Times Square in New York City and used it to promote quarterback Joey Harrington for the award. He finished fourth in the voting.

This year’s promoting is more high-tech.

Kansas State officials launched a gadget-infested Web site this year dedicated to promoting running back Darren Sproles as a candidate. The site, darrensproles43.com, has highlight clips, newspaper clippings, testimony of his play, a lengthy biography and statistics available just in case one of the nearly 1,000 media members and 52 former winners who vote for the award could possibly be swayed.

Sproles, though, is not alone.

Akron quarterback Charlie Frye is hyped as a legitimate candidate on his biography page. So are Missouri quarterback Brad Smith, Syracuse running back Walter Reyes, USC quarterback Matt Leinart and dozens of others across the nation.

Some have their own Web sites, like Sproles and Frye. Some have mere mentions in the media guide, like Smith.

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But some get a whole lot more. Grambling State, for example, held a “Bruce Eugene Heisman Trophy pep rally” in August to promote its senior quarterback to anyone who wanted to attend. The press release proudly proclaimed, “Eugene has reported to camp in good shape and has been performing on course as expected during the preseason workouts.”

Money well spent?

The multi-media marketing for the statue is so prevalent, it’s sometimes mocked. A couple of USC fans started an unofficial campaign for Trojan punter Tom Malone, complete with a witty Web site, malone4heisman.com.

One picture on the site, of Malone getting ready to unleash a punt, has a caption underneath saying, “The poor ball is about to feel the funk.”

Humor aside, the satirical site for “The Hero of Hangtime” does illustrate — and make fun of — the extremes to which universities go to get their standouts mentioned at water coolers around the country each morning.

“There’s a very fine line between exposing the candidates and insulting the intelligence of the voters,” Oklahoma assistant athletic director Randy Mossman said. “I’m really skeptical about the value of anything that goes much beyond the normal release of the right information.”

Oklahoma, for the most part, has stayed away from churning too much hype. White is pictured with his new trophy near the front of the 404-page media guide, but no obvious push is being made to promote him as a possible candidate in 2004.

It might be because White doesn’t seem to want it again. Sports Illustrated ran a lengthy, somewhat gloomy piece in August talking of White’s post-Heisman hangover — one fueled by the Sooners’ late-season tailspin last year that denied them of the Big 12 and national championship trophies after a 12-0 start.

“I don’t expect to be the Heisman front-runner this year,” White told SI, “and I don’t care to be.”

Peterson, OU’s talented freshman running back, may have slid into White’s front-runner seat this season. Peterson had no preseason hype — which is fair, considering he was playing high school football in Texas last year — but his success has been immense so far, and national media outlets have begun to chatter about him already.

No Web site, pep rally or media guide love needed.

“Campaigns are overrated,” Mossman said. “Adrian Peterson is the best walking example of that.”

The Heisman generation

KU fans, without realistic expectations these days, still yearn to bring a Heisman Trophy to campus. Signs have popped up in Memorial Stadium campaigning Bill Whittemore and John Randle for the trophy, though neither was intended to cause much of a national tremble.

To get the coveted Heisman, one has to produce eye-popping numbers, play for a team with national exposure and national success — and maybe even get a little help from an athletic department willing to spend the bucks to get the attention.

Even then, it’s never a given.

Sproles, thanks in part to a lack of support around him and a 2-4 start by K-State, likely is out of the running for this year’s race. The Web site still carries on, though, with weekly updates designed to catch the eye of somebody with a vote.

It’s understandable. The Heisman Trophy has become a pop-culture mainstay, and money isn’t much of an issue with schools trying to get a piece of it.

“It’s big for recruiting,” Mossman said. “I think players want to know that they’re going to have an opportunity for exposure at any program they choose. And the Heisman Trophy represents the pinnacle of college sports.”

Until the Jayhawks start winning a lot more — with a quarterback, running back or wide receiver providing the bulk of the offensive success — Jayhawk fans will continue to see the Heisman as a fantasy those other schools get to live.

Don’t expect the signs to go away, though. Every campus still has that dream.