Tennessee's football team probably won't win much more than half its games this season. Safety Eric Berry, the team's star player, might not score a touchdown all year. But that doesn't matter. In the school's opinion, he should be considered for the Heisman Trophy.

Given an unusually rich slate of leading candidates, there couldn't be a worse year to try to promote a longshot Heisman candidate. But Tennessee's athletic department has already put up 10 billboards across the South touting Mr. Berry and plans to spend roughly $10,000 on a PR campaign that includes mass mailings to reporters and viral videos.

"It's just letting the country see who Eric Berry is," says a Tennessee spokeswoman.

College football fans are famous for holding grudges. Sometimes it's a blown call, a turncoat coach, a phantom touchdown or an old water jug that wasn't promptly returned. But in some parts of the country—and especially in the South—there's one old grievance that still burns hotly. When it comes to the Heisman, they say, the South gets a raw deal.

While the voting is designed to be egalitarian—the 870 media members who vote on the award are equally divided among the nation's six major regions—for whatever reason, Heisman voters have not been kind to Southern football. Since 1935, the year of the first award, individuals from the Midwest have won 22 Heismans overall while the Southwest has claimed 16 and the West 11. The total for the South, as defined by the Heisman, is 12; and outside the state of Florida, it's five—the last being Auburn's Bo Jackson in 1985. Alabama, which owns the second-most consensus national championships among major schools behind Notre Dame, has never won. Tennessee, which is the eighth-winningest major college team, hasn't either.