The Associated Press

NEW YORK — In the tradition of the Ryan Leaf leaf, Joey Harrington’s Times Square billboard and the DeAngelo Williams mobile, Missouri has found a unique way to remind Heisman Trophy voters to keep an eye out for Chase Daniel.

The Mizzou football slide viewer, a View-master-style toy that’s sure to bring back childhood memories, packed with pictures of Daniel in action has been showing up in mail boxes of voters and media members around the country.

“I didn’t want to do just a mouse pad or a coffee mug, other standard items or more basic items. I didn’t want to do anything that people could just toss aside,” Missouri sports information director Chad Moller said by phone Wednesday. “We wanted to create a little splash and do it in a classy manner.”

Moller credited Missouri men’s basketball SID Dave Reiter for the idea. He tossed it during a brainstorming session during the summer. It wasn’t an immediate winner, but the idea stuck with Moller.

“I’d never seen anyone promote using one of those,” Moller said. “I wasn’t even sure they even made them anymore.”

Moller found a company in Beaver Creek, Ore., called Image3D, that made what he was looking for and ordered up 2,500.

“You can argue that we really didn’t need to do anything for Chase with him being a finalist last year and coming in on everybody’s short list,” Moller said. “But we’ve never been in this place before, so we decided, let’s embrace it and have some fun with it.”

Promoting Heisman Trophy contenders is almost as much a part of the awards history and tradition as the big bronze statue itself.

Decades ago, that meant getting a player a prime spot in the preseason magazines and sending out posters or fliers touting his accomplishments.

More recently, it’s become all about the Internet. Aside from www.ChasetheHeisman.com, football fans can follow the seasons of the two players Texas Tech is pushing for Heisman consideration — quarterback Graham Harrell and receiver Michael Crabtree — at www.passorcatch200.com.

There’s www.Patwhiteplayshere.com, which provides all there is to know about the speedy West Virginia quarterback. And Purdue set up www.CurtisPainter12.com to get the word out on their senior quarterback. That’s just to name a few.

But every now and then a school comes up with something that truly stands out.

In 1997, Washington State coach Mike Price came up with a very simple idea to promote Leaf, his star quarterback.

Longtime athletic director Rod Commons, who retired last year, had two secretaries fill up a big box with leaves that were falling off the many trees on the Pullman campus that autumn.