Ole Miss displays a Heisman Trophy campaign in Times Square for quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy. OUTFRONTEli LedermanSep 3, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseEli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsNEW YORK — Few people understand the unique marketing power of Times Square better than Robert Burck.Muscled, goateed and impressively tan, the 55-year-old has operated his business from the five-block sliver of Midtown Manhattan for the past 28 years, forging a global brand that has taken him to faraway places such as Australia, Japan and Daytona Beach, Florida. Leaning into the undeniable forces of one of the world’s busiest pedestrian intersections and a famous pair of tighty whities, he pulls in more than $200,000 annually in tips alone, by his own estimation.Today, Burck, better known as the Naked Cowboy, is standing on the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 47th Street doing what he does 300-plus days a year: flexing his biceps, strumming his guitar and snapping photos with tourists, surrounded by all of Times Square’s other ever-present fixtures. There are billboards for Broadway mainstays “Aladdin,” “Wicked” and “The Lion King”; sprawling advertisements for Coca Cola and M&M’s; and street performers dressed as Elmo, Spider-Man and King Kong.After nearly three decades as the Naked Cowboy, Burck explains, the unrelenting churn of promotional activity in the area tends to blend together.”It’s all a wash for me,” he says.So, Burck didn’t initially notice when Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and running back Kewan Lacy showed up on a pair of 96-foot-tall digital billboards in Times Square on Aug. 24.
Part of a two-week promotional residency at the center of the nation’s most populous city, the arrival of the star duo was part of the latest phase of the school’s aggressive preseason Heisman Trophy campaign built around Chambliss, one of the breakout stars of the Rebels’ 2025 season, and Lacy, back this fall after he finished as the nation’s third-leading rusher.Equipped with two of the sport’s most exciting returning offensive talents, Ole Miss has joined college football’s rich and storied history of vibrant Heisman Trophy campaigns. After planting a flag in Times Square, the school followed this week with a partial takeover of the Las Vegas Sphere, set to run through Saturday in the lead-up to the No. 9 Rebels’ season opener against No. 24 Louisville at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium on Sunday (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).Putting #H6I5MEN on the world’s largest LED screen 🪩Starting today at 11 AM CST/9AM PST pic.twitter.com/hiI3xbky3W— Ole Miss Football (@OleMissFB) August 30, 2026 “You can’t put a price tag on that type of publicity,” said Ole Miss senior associate athletic director Drew Ingraham. “For us, it was a question of where can we make the biggest statement?
Where can we get the most eyes? The goal was not only to promote Trinidad and Kewan but also to put the University of Mississippi and Ole Miss athletics at the forefront of college athletics too.”Spiritually, the Rebels’ strategic campaign fits squarely within the long celebrated tradition of Heisman hype efforts, a history that includes Joe Theismann’s name change at Notre Dame in the 1960s, leaves for Ryan Leaf at Washington State in 1997 and Oregon’s “Joey Heisman” pitch in 2001, when the Ducks erected an 80-foot-by-100-foot billboard of quarterback Joey Harrington outside New York’s Madison Square Garden.Yet, Ole Miss’ preseason marketing blitz, and similar politicking at SMU this summer for quarterback Kevin Jennings, also offers a glimpse into the contemporary goals, incentives and realities beneath the surface of the modern Heisman campaign. Why did the Rebels take the Heisman candidacies of Chambliss and Lacy 1,100-plus miles from Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and into the relative college football desert of New York City? Burck understands perfectly.”This place is insidious,” the Naked Cowboy says.
“It’s the beauty of Times Square. Everything spreads from here.”OLE MISS WASN’T the only school to launch a Heisman campaign this summer or even the only college football program to consider a New York City installation in 2026. Not long after Jennings decided to return for a fifth season at SMU, officials in the Mustangs’ athletic department began ideating on the right campaign to build around the school’s senior signal-caller.Fundamentally, every Heisman campaign is an act of storytelling. In this case, Jennings’ hometown roots as a native son of Dallas and his jersey number (7) made for a natural pairing.
In the early planning phases of what became the “K7NG OF DALLAS” campaign, SMU senior associate athletic director Clark Williams said the program briefly contemplated a billboard in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, roughly seven miles from the Heisman Trust’s lower Manhattan offices.Instead, the Mustangs opted for a more traditional campaign, at least primarily. SMU coach Rhett Lashlee showed up to ACC Kickoff last month wearing a “Jennings for Heisman” T-shirt; ACC commissioner Jim Phillips got one too. This week, the program debuted a billboard in a prominent area of Dallas featuring Jennings and a fresh tag line: “The K7NG RETURNS”.Latest from the Heisman campaign beat: SMU has launched the next phase of Kevin Jennings’ “K7NG OF DALLAS” campaign in Dallas.Follows SMU naming its future athletics recovery center after the senior QB and HC Rhett Lashlee’s “Jennings for Heisman” shirt at ACC Kickoff in July. pic.twitter.com/GxjQJhHJeE— Eli Lederman (@ByEliLederman) August 31, 2026 In the midst of SMU’s preseason push for Jennings, the messaging around a $150 million renovation on campus was created with equal intention. In July, the Mustangs announced that a soon-to-be constructed athletic recovery center within the school’s football complex, funded by alumni donors, will be named after Jennings, an unprecedented honor for a current student-athlete.
The timing was no accident.”A campaign like this in 2026 involves so many elements, from social media to branding,” Williams said. “All of those pieces play a role in vying for the Heisman. Some of it’s direct, like launching the Heisman campaign itself. And then there’s these indirect elements, like the recovery center.
That announcement, in and of itself, wasn’t a Heisman moment. But we knew that that part of Kevin’s story would help drive his campaign.”While Ole Miss and SMU have reached new frontiers in 2026, the broader arc of the Heisman campaign has been defined as much by colorful gimmicks as its history of innovation.One of the first recognized efforts sprouted at Oregon State in 1962. Concerned that national media members were missing out on Beavers quarterback Terry Baker on the West Coast, Oregon State sports information director John Eggers began mailing updated stats to national media members weekly. Baker ultimately won the Heisman Trophy by a thin margin of 89 votes.A year later, Navy’s athletic department sent writers across the country a four-page pamphlet with information on the eventual 1963 Heisman winner entitled “Meet Roger Staubach”.
In 1977, Heisman hype yielded a revolutionary statistic. Resistant to running a formal campaign for Texas running back Earl Campbell, Longhorns sports information director Jones Ramsey instead pioneered a new metric to showcase Campbell’s excellence: yards after contact.”Initially, campaigns fit a very specific purpose,” Heisman historian Chris Huston said. “The games weren’t on TV. It took a long time for players to penetrate the consciousnesses of the media and the voters, so programs went to work on getting their star player’s names out there.”Promotional gimmicks — such as BYU’s cardboard ties for Ty Detmer in 1990, toy cars for DeAngelo Williams at Memp
