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Ole Miss Is Spending An Fortune To Hype Up Players For The Heisman On The Sphere And In Times Square Before They’ve Played A Game

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Trinidad Chambliss and Kewan Lacy next to The Sphere in Las Vegas

Petre Thomas-Imagn Images/Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Trinidad Chambliss and Kewan Lacy next to The Sphere in Las Vegas


There are preseason Heisman campaigns, and then there is spending the price of a pretty nice house to make sure people in New York and Las Vegas know your quarterback and running back exist. Ole Miss is reportedly dropping an estimated $600,000 to $750,000 promoting Trinidad Chambliss and Kewan Lacy before either one has played a snap this season.

The Rebels have put the duo on a pair of 96-foot digital screens in Times Square and followed that by splashing them across the exterior of the Las Vegas Sphere. Industry sources told ESPN that the combined campaign likely costs somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, although Ole Miss and advertising partner Outfront Media declined to disclose the actual figure.

Ole Miss Is Spending Serious Money Before Week 1

The Times Square portion is not exactly a poster taped inside an Oxford bar.

Ole Miss bought what is called the “North End Domination” package, which includes the two 96-foot screens along with another 65-foot display and two 35-foot digital boards. The campaign began Aug. 24 and is scheduled to run for two weeks in front of hundreds of thousands of people passing through Times Square every day.

Then Ole Miss decided New York was not enough.

The school announced that its H6I5MEN campaign would move to the Sphere beginning Aug. 30 and continue leading into Sunday’s opener against Louisville in Nashville.

That is a lot of advertising for an award that will not be handed out until December.

It is also happening before either player has provided a single 2026 highlight to put in the commercial.

Chambliss and Lacy certainly earned the hype last season. Chambliss emerged from Division II obscurity to become one of college football’s breakout quarterbacks, while Lacy developed into one of the nation’s most productive running backs. The two also stayed at Ole Miss after Lane Kiffin left for LSU, giving the Rebels two obvious faces for the post-Kiffin era.

Apparently Ole Miss looked at that situation and chose subtlety’s exact opposite.

Heisman Campaigns Have Entered The Sphere Era

Schools marketing Heisman candidates is nothing new.

Programs have mailed bobbleheads, launched websites, purchased billboards, and created increasingly elaborate publicity campaigns for decades. The entire objective is to make sure voters are thinking about your guy before the national conversation becomes impossible to change.

Ole Miss has simply updated the strategy for 2026.

A Times Square billboard is no longer just seen by the people walking underneath it. It becomes social content, gets reposted across college football accounts, and suddenly generates millions of additional impressions.

The Sphere takes that philosophy and wraps it around a 580,000-square-foot LED exterior.

Whether any of this actually produces Heisman votes is impossible to know.