Maintaining Dayne: Steve Malchow Manages the Media Madness Surrounding the Heisman Candidate

Crowds and Ron Dayne don’t get along. Perhaps that’s why he has become so adept at busting them up, ducking his head and smashing his 262-pound frame on through to open space.

It’s a habit that has landed him among the Pantheon of college football. But it has produced a daunting side effect: The sophomore running back now draws as many crowds off the field as on.

Ron Dayne can expect to face some crowds of reporters that will be as imposing as some of the defensive lines he'll face on the field this year.

On one August afternoon, Dayne is encircled by a scrum of media types – reporters, camera operators, microphone-wielding broadcasters. Twelve, thirteen, now fourteen interviewers back Dayne up to the two-yard line of the practice field in the McClain Center.

“Ron, does the Heisman Trophy hype bother you?” he is asked.

“No.” The answer comes so softly that reporters in the back lean closer, straining to hear. This causes the group to inch forward, pushing Dayne back to the goal line. “It doesn’t bother me. I try to just play.”

Dayne, who won’t turn 20 years old until next March, seems to will the words from his lips. Then comes an afterthought – a boyish smile, complete with dimples. With an aw-shucks face that belies the muscle-bound body beneath it, he shifts to the next interrogator and listens patiently to another Heisman question – his third of this session and umpteenth since the beginning of the month.

Thirty yards away, a man a half foot shorter and nearly 150 pounds lighter than Dayne moves among the Badger football players, stealing a glance every few moments to the far end of the field. The well-being of the star running back is never far from his mind these days: Shepherding Dayne through media blitzes like these has become pretty much Steve Malchow’s full-time job.

In seven years of working as the men’s sports information director for UW–Madison, Malchow has never spent as much time with a player as he has with Dayne. As the coordinator of media activities for men’s athletics, he’s responsible for promoting the Badgers and their star. Not that Malchow needs any help. Dayne, the first legitimate candidate to bring the Heisman Trophy to Madison since Alan Ameche won it in 1954, is a publicity magnet – “a once-in-a-lifetime player to publicize,” Malchow says.

Steve Malchow (left) and Ron Dayne discuss some of the finer points of the Heisman Trophy.

But he’s also an introverted 19-year-old one year removed from childhood in the relative seclusion of suburban Berlin, N.J. In front of the hot glare of television cameras, he is at times awkward, out of his comfort zone. He’s a Great Dayne in a china shop.

Malchow’s job is to get the guy who prefers not to talk about himself to do it every day for the next year.

It’s understandable, then, that Malchow looked ahead to this season with some anxiety. After December’s season-capping Copper Bowl victory, in which Dayne played a customary heroic role, Malchow spent an extra week in Arizona recuperating from a separated shoulder – and plotting how to deal with Dayne.

“I came back from the Copper Bowl kind of panicking, because I didn’t have much of a relationship with the kid,” Malchow says. “I didn’t feel there was a lot of trust between us. I just didn’t know him all that well.”

It didn’t help that Dayne doesn’t much care for promotions – or promoters. “I represent something Ron doesn’t much adore doing,” Malchow says. “I think he saw me as kind of the bad guy.”

One of Malchow’s proudest achievements has been breaking through Dayne’s brawny exoskeleton. What he found underneath surprised him.

Malchow knew he could offer Dayne experience in handling a Heisman candidate; he helped guide quarterback Chuck Long to a second-place balloting in 1986 while assistant sports information director at Iowa. But he also recognized that Dayne’s campaign would be – must be – distinctively managed. Unlike the athletes he’s worked with over the years who have relished the spotlight, Dayne wasn’t looking to be a slickly finished poster boy. So Malchow didn’t try to make him one.

“I wouldn’t ask Ron to change,” Malchow says. “I wouldn’t want him to. You hear the way people describe him – humble, soft-spoken. What a breath of fresh air.”

Over the summer, Malchow and Dayne worked together on a plan to introduce Dayne to a national audience and prepared for the onslaught of interviews to come in the fall. Malchow brought in an expert trainer to work with Dayne on dealing with the media and emphasized his role as one of helping, not hyping, the athlete.

For several weeks, he wasn’t sure if he was reaching the teenager. Later, he would learn that with Dayne, silence shouldn’t be confused with nonchalance. “He is a great listener – a very thoughtful person,” Malchow says. “I might give him a tip, and a week later I’ll see that he’s implemented it in an interview.”

After one summer meeting with Malchow, Dayne spotted a business card on the desk. “Can I take your card?” he asked.

Malchow knew he had made a connection. “I thought, wow, he trusts me enough to rely on me.”

“Steve has been really helpful. We talk a lot, and he has given me a lot of advice,” Dayne says in a near-paragraph of praise that, for a man who chooses his words like prize-winning grapes, speaks volumes.

The newfound friendship between player and publicist has led to one of the most unique promotional campaigns in athletics. Malchow, hoping to have a bit of mnemonic fun with Dayne’s name, asked Ron to pose with four Great Danes for a picture he intended to put on a postcard statistics update. Dayne poured out so much hitherto-unseen affection with the dogs that Malchow asked Dayne if he’d like the opportunity to work with animals. The response was enthusiastic.

The postcard has now been parlayed into a poster campaign in cooperation with the Humane Society. Dayne, who grew up with two dogs and after college plans to adopt one of his own, volunteered to do radio and television spots, and the university gave away 5,000 full-size posters of Dayne and the Danes at the Badgers’ family day last week. Billboards featuring the dogs will start appearing around Madison this week.

For Malchow, the Great Dayne campaign was an overwhelming, if unexpected, tripartite success. He knows Dayne’s love for dogs won’t win him the Heisman, but it has drawn national publicity for Dayne, the university and the Humane Society. “It’s a win-win-win deal,” he says. “It reflects well on him and the school.” He notes that his office has already fielded several calls from elementary schools and hospitals asking for posters to use as giveaways. One juvenile detention center wanted copies to offer as rewards for good behavior.

Of course, the poster campaign has only magnified the attention on Dayne, the youngest player ever to contend for the Heisman. As the season starts, Malchow and his two full-time assistants are adding to already long hours responding to all the requests for a few minutes with Dayne.

That means eking out slivers of time – a precious commodity – in Dayne’s routine of practice, training and studying.

“I have to respect all the requirements he has on his time,” Malchow says. “Ron’s media attention could easily become a major distraction. It can’t become all-encompassing. We all have to remember he’s only a college sophomore.”

Malchow estimates that fully half of his job now is managing the media requests for Dayne. “We’ve had to reshuffle assignments because I’ve got so much Dayne on my plate,” he says. “Our office has been really burdened by it. There’s just so much attention that he draws.

“It’s a huge stress, but it’s the kind of stress you pray for. I’m the luckiest SID in the country.”

It’s five-forty. The luckiest SID in the country walks briskly along a muddy path toward the rain-soaked practice fields of Holy Name Catholic Center. Ahead, he sees a few players lingering on the field. “Don’t tell me practice is over,” he says with a start. Another request to talk about Ron Dayne has made him late to practice. “Okay, I’ve got to run,” he calls back to the reporter, breaking into a trot toward the field.

In just the first 10 days of camp, Malchow received 40 interview requests for Dayne. The New York Times has interviewed him; so has ABC News. When he last checked his messages, he found three new requests, all from major metropolitan papers, for Dayne.

Not every request is honored. A few days ago, Malchow convinced the Washington Post to write a Dayne feature without interviewing Dayne. You have to give the kid a break.

Down the hill on the practice fields, a soft rain has started to fall. A few reporters mill about underneath red-and-white striped tents. You can guess who they’re waiting for. Break time is over.