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Hollywood, Calif. • Christian McCaffrey had just finished racing through the Iowa defense like a cornfield-lined stretch of I-80 without a state trooper in sight last January when he heard the man shouting over his postgame interview.
"Heisman! Heisman! Heisman!"
And even in a buzzing Rose Bowl, Stanford's star running back couldn't ignore it.
"It was hard not to notice him. He was like right here," McCaffrey recalled Friday, with his hand just behind his head and a smile growing across his face.
At the start of his junior campaign, however, McCaffrey is doing his best to try to block out any talk of claiming the trophy many believe should already be sitting on a shelf in his dorm room in Palo Alto.
"I don't have any goals set to break this record, break that record," McCaffrey said as Pac-12 media days continued Friday. "Just get the most yards as possible on each carry."
That's the same strategy, he said, that served him so well last year. Along the way, McCaffrey racked up 3,864 all-purpose yards, a single-season NCAA record. He rushed for eight touchdowns, caught five of them and housed a punt and a kickoff apiece. Oh yeah, he also threw a pair of touchdowns for the 12-2 Cardinal.
But in the end, McCaffrey lost out on the Heisman to Alabama running back Derrick Henry, who had a record-setting season of his own in the powerful SEC. Henry's 1,986 rushing yards and 23 touchdowns broke the conference's single-season records and led the nation.
Nevertheless, McCaffrey's second-place finish was seen as a snub and a product of East Coast (or at least Southeast) bias and the Pac-12's affinity for late kickoffs.
As one voter in Bloomington, Ill., wrote in a mea culpa following McCaffrey's splendid Rose Bowl performance, "Stanford plays on the West Coast, often kicking off deep into the night for other time zones. Seven of the Cardinal games started at 9 p.m. or later Central time and were not always televised here in farm country. Maybe McCaffrey was out of mind because he was out of sight."
"Pac-12 after dark" has become the unofficial slogan for fans of the conference on the West Coast, but officials are trying to give the league's stars a bigger spotlight. This season, the conference reduced the number of late kickoffs by up to four, allowing games on its own network to kick off earlier and overlap with national broadcast competitors ESPN and FOX.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, however, isn't convinced that late kickoffs cost McCaffrey the coveted trophy.
"No one can say for sure, but I don't think it would have made one iota of difference," Scott said this week.
Oregon's Marcus Mariota had won the trophy the year before playing a similar schedule, he noted, so if the season is strong enough and the conditions are right, a Pac-12 player can win it.
Still, he felt some problems existed simply given the number of voters who left McCaffrey off their ballot entirely.
"There's no doubt in my mind that there is a competitive disadvantage for a player from the Pac-12 winning the Heisman, just based on the zip codes of where the voters are from," he said. "Many of them are just not watching the games. That's the only conclusion I can come to."
The All-American tailback, however, can't be bothered with any of that right now.
"I could care less about exposure," he said. "Whether I have the greatest season ever and everybody sees it … or no one sees it, whatever it is, if I'm playing football that will bring me peace and that's where I'm happy."
His coach called him "the best player in the nation." But this week, the 20-year-old was busy being wowed by the opportunity to attend the ESPY awards show and brush shoulders with NBA superstars LeBron James and Stephen Curry. McCaffrey was too starstruck at the event to even get out a proper "Wooooo!" when he shook the hand of wrestling icon Ric Flair.
Right now, McCaffrey said, he can still enjoy anonymity on the Stanford campus, where "the next Mark Zuckerberg or the next Steve Jobs" doesn't look twice at him in the halls.
On the football field, however, McCaffrey is already a star — and the Cardinal will need him to be an even bigger one this year.
Quarterback Kevin Hogan, guard Joshua Garnett and tackle Kyle Murphy have all moved on to the NFL, leaving McCaffrey to shoulder the load of a Stanford team that, for the first time ever, is the preseason favorite to win the conference.
"I think the thing is to look at all the things he did last year and say he can do each one of them a little bit better, knowing that he's a little bit wiser, he's stronger, and he's faster," Stanford coach David Shaw said.
Shaw intends to ride his star back to victory this fall, giving McCaffrey all the carries he can handle.
"I think when you have a great player, the last thing you want to do is pump the brakes," the coach said. "You want to push the accelerator."
And even coming off a record-setting season, McCaffrey said he is busy fixing the holes in his game and adding to his already impressive repertoire as a runner.
"You can always do more," he said. "The price always increases."
If he can pay it, McCaffrey should be holding onto the Heisman this year, instead of just hearing about it.
Twitter: @aaronfalk —
McCaffrey's 2015 statistics
Rushing • 337 att. 2,019 yards 8 TDs
Receiving • 45 rec. 645 yards 5 TDs
Passing • 2-3-0 39 yards 2 TDs
Kickoff returns • 37 att. 1,070 yards 1 TD
Punt returns • 15 att. 130 yards 1 TD