The AJC and a few others on the Georgia beat have noted that Boise State will not make any players available to “opposing media” before the Georgia game.

It’s silly to begin with and probably makes perfect sense to a media market small enough to be so easily segmented. It will be interesting to see who turns out to get that label. Obviously the Georgia beat writers qualify, but would someone like Barnhart? Technically he’s a national guy now, but his background is all about southern football. But Boise isn’t doing themselves any favors. There isn’t a bigger concentration of college football passion than there is in the South, and that passion supports a strong media presence. Many of those members of the media aren’t only influential outside of the South; they also vote on everything from the AP poll to the Heisman.

Heisman votes are distributed by region. As you might imagine, results often quite different from region to region as votes naturally go to players with whom the voters might be more familiar. The inverse is true also – players, unless they’re runaway favorites, tend to do less well in the Heisman voting the further they get from their region. You can see in 2009 that Ingram carried most of the east and even the midwest, but he did no better than 3rd on the west coast and in the southwest.

That said, if you had a chance to get your Heisman candidate in front of media from regions across the country, it might stand to reason that the media – many of whom vote on postseason awards – will become more familiar with that player. Their profile of your star player might be a good addition to his press portfolio. Probably the last thing you’d want to do is alienate an entire region of media and voters, especially when it’s likely that your star will struggle to have many more high-profile television appearances in the region.