STANFORD — Bryce Love’s unexpected bid for the Heisman Trophy began two months ago and 7,400 miles from campus with a 62-yard dash against Rice on Stanford’s first play of the season.

Since that day in Sydney, Australia, Love has kept his foot on the gas pedal. He has a run of at least 50 yards in every game this season and has zoomed from obscurity to a spot on everyone’s mid-season All-America team.

The Stanford athletic department added some digital blocking for the nation’s leading rusher during the team’s off week with the unveiling of Twitter hashtag #HeismanLove and the website brycelove20.com.

Love’s chief competition for the award, Penn State running back Saquon Barkley, took advantage of a big stage Saturday to score three touchdowns as the No. 2 Nittany Lions crushed Michigan 42-13 in a prime-time game. Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield kept himself in the conversation by passing for 410 yards and accounting for four touchdowns in a win at Kansas State.

Now, presuming he is fully healthy after what appeared to be a minor physical glitch two weeks ago against Oregon, Love will try to rev things up again Thursday night when the Cardinal visits Oregon State.

Can the 5-foot-10, 196-pound junior from Wake Forest, North Carolina, actually win the Heisman and end a run of four Stanford runner-up finishes since 2009?

Cory McCartney, one of 929 voters for the award and author of the 2016 book, “The Heisman Trophy: The story of an American icon and its winners,” believes Love can take home the trophy from the New York City Athletic Club on Dec. 9.

He also concedes, “I do think he’s behind Saquon Barkley right now.”

Ivan Maisel, a senior writer for ESPN.com and a Heisman voter since 1987, said last week his vote right now would go to Love. But Maisel, a Stanford graduate, isn’t convinced it can happen, given geography and the impact of late kickoff times on viewers — and voters — in the East.

“I’m pretty much skeptical somebody on the West Coast can win these days,” he said.

So what has to transpire for Love to finish one spot higher than Stanford’s Toby Gerhart (2009), Andrew Luck (2010 and ’11) and Christian McCaffrey (2015)?

Three factors will decide Love’s Heisman fate: His performance, the competition and visibilty.

Love’s game-day credentials so far are impeccable. He has rushed for at least 142 yards in every game, eclipsed McCaffrey’s single-game school record with 301 yards against Arizona State and has more runs of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 yards than any player in FBS.

His 1,387 rushing yards are 245 more than anyone in the country.

“I’m a believer in this kid. Anybody who averages 10 yards a carry … that’s insane,” said Dick Weiss, a sports writer for more than 40 years in New York and Philadelphia and the Heisman committee representative for the Mid-Atlantic region.

Love’s stunning rise had a starting point completely off the national radar. Sports Illustrated in August ran a list of the nation’s top 100 college players that included 18 from the Pac-12, 11 running backs and nine Alabama players. There was no love for Bryce.

Barkley, meanwhile, had a running start among preseason Heisman favorites, and he has done nothing to diminish his chances. Although he is only 17th nationally with 757 rushing yards, he leads FBS in all-purpose yards per game (211.14). Love is second (200.86).

Barkley also plays for an unbeaten team and has assembled a collection of what are known as “Heisman moments.” He had 211 rushing yards at Iowa, threw a touchdown pass and returned a kickoff 98 yards for a score against Indiana and caught an 85-yard touchdown pass against Georgia State.

His performance against Michigan kicked off a high-profile three-week stretch that takes the Nittany Lions to No. 6 Ohio State on Saturday, then to Michigan State the following week.

“Nobody else has the opportunity he has,” McCartney said.

Losses by then-unbeatens Washington and Washington State two weeks ago and USC’s pummeling at Notre Dame last Saturday seriously dented the Pac-12’s national standing and could have a trickle-down impact on Love.

“You hate to put a conference’s reputation into a guy’s resume,” McCartney said, “but I think it happens.”

All the more reason for Stanford to ramp up the publicity machine.

Coach David Shaw bristled last week when asked whether the athletic department is doing more for Love than it did for McCaffrey or Stanford’s other Heisman silver medalists.

But back in 2015, as McCaffrey steamed toward breaking Barry Sanders’ national all-purpose yardage record, Shaw didn’t appear to be a big believer in the benefits of mounting a Heisman campaign.

“There have been billboards in New York, email campaigns, text message campaigns. None of that’s been proven to work,” he said on Oct. 15 of that season. “Nothing anyone does works outside of playing great football and winning games late in the year.”

Three weeks later, on Nov. 10, Stanford rolled out WildCaff.com, a promotional website touting McCaffrey’s achievements. A month after that, just before the voting deadline, the school produced a creative 360-degree video profile.

McCaffrey wound up second to Derrick Henry, the running back from Alabama, which did nothing to promote its star aside from winning all of its games.

It was Oregon that tried the billboard approach in 2001 when beginning its campaign for quarterback Joey Harrington. The school paid $250,000 for an 80-by-100-foot billboard of “Joey Heisman” across from Madison Square Garden.

But when he was introduced during the award presentation as being from Oregon State, Harrington knew he wasn’t going to win. He finished fourth.

Harrington told McCartney he met voters weeks later at the Fiesta Bowl who admitted it was the first time they had seen him play.

“I still think there’s people who don’t give those candidates a fair shot,” McCartney said of the handicap of playing in the Pacific time zone.

The impact geography has on the visibility factor is beyond the school’s control.

Eastern viewers simply do not see the entirety of night games played on the West Coast. Stanford has finished only one game all season before 11:51 p.m ET, meaning that audience has missed many of Love’s “Heisman moments.” The UCLA game, in which Love ran for 263 yards, ended at 2:25 a.m. ET.

Maisel recalled listening on the radio while driving toward Omaha, Nebraska, when he heard Love break his 68-yard, fourth-quarter touchdown run against Utah. “But it was 1 in the morning, eastern time,” he said.

“It’s something I worry about,” said Weiss, noting that the Pac-12’s TV deal often has teams playing games that start at 10:30 p.m. ET to fill vacant programming slots for ESPN and Fox.

Washington coach Chris Petersen caused a mini-furor two weeks ago with remarks on the topic, and Shaw chimed in last week, saying, “People can get offended and upset (but) game times matter.”

In fact, Penn State has walked off the field this season an average of five hours earlier than Stanford. That not only means more game viewers, but translates to highlights being recycled all evening on SportsCenter. By the time Stanford’s late games end, as many as half of Heisman’s 870 media voters could be asleep.

In his team’s lone day game, Love used the opportunity to rush for 301 yards. But the game was shown on the Pac-12 Networks, mostly to a regional audience.

“No one in New York or Philadelphia gets the Pac-12 Network,” Weiss said.

So, with high-profile home games looming next month against Washington and Notre Dame, Love will continue to run as far and fast he can and Stanford will try to spread the news.

There are no guarantees it will be enough.

Back in 1970, Notre Dame’s legendary sports information director Roger Valdiserri was convinced a promotional trick would push his man to the top. He talked quarterback Joe Theismann into changing the pronunciation of his last name from “Thees-man” to rhyme with Heisman.

Theismann finished second, behind another quarterback: Stanford’s Jim Plunkett.