The Selling of Steve Alford : He May Only Be a Second-Rounder to the NBA, but He’s Still Big in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS —  The selling of Steve Alford’s All-American image is putting enough money in his pockets to support him and his new bride comfortably, at least for several years, whether he signs a professional basketball contract or not.

From hoops to hamburgers, Alford’s fame is being marketed on a variety of products and services, all carefully planned by his agent-father, Sam Alford.

“I’ve worked very hard . . . spent many, many hours on this,” says Sam, who realized early that no one else would, or could, promote his son’s image as well as he could himself.

It’s been a consistent image as a clean-cut, straight-arrow basketball hero that has made Steve, a second-round NBA draft pick by Dallas, very attractive as a company spokesman in Indiana.

“He’s both well thought of and well known. In a state whose No.1 passion is basketball, the best known basketball player in the state was the logical choice,” said Mike Goss, manager of public information for Public Service Indiana.

Alford, a two-time All-American who led Indiana University to the NCAA championship last spring, signed a two-year contract as a safety representative for PSI, an electrical utility which serves 1.5 million central Indiana customers.

Others hoping to benefit from his fame include the American Dairy Assn. of Indiana, McDonald’s restaurants, Converse athletic shoes, a Chrysler dealer in Indianapolis and a Chevrolet dealer in Fort Wayne, and an Indianapolis furniture store. And there are probably at least a half-dozen other promotions in the works.

Alford also has a $40 video cassette on the market, with Steve demonstrating a basketball workout program.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” says Garry Donna, publisher of Hoosier Basketball magazine and an agent whose clients included former Indiana Pacers Bill Keller and George McGinnis.

Like Alford, Keller and McGinnis were Indiana’s Mr. Basketball in high school. But neither generated the appeal to all ages and all types of people that Alford does, Donna said.

“I was very involved with Billy Keller (after he left Purdue and joined the Pacers), and he was very popular. He was the closest one (to Alford in popularity), but Steve even seems to transcend that. I think there are a couple reasons.

“Billy’s time was 10-12 years ago. The media, like everything else, progresses, so there is more coverage now than there was then. Another, obviously, was IU’s national championship. That was a factor, and I think IU probably gets more exposure than Purdue does.”

Donna is working with Sam Alford in promoting Steve locally. Agent Larry Fleischer also has been hired to handle Steve’s negotiations with the Mavericks.

As a second-round draftee, Alford might not get as many basketball dollars as he otherwise would have on the first round, but so far, Donna said, that doesn’t seem to have affected his endorsements.

“A friend of mine from Dallas is in the promotional business. They have a Ford dealer in Dallas who already wants to do something with him,” Donna said.

“He’s also done a lot of charity things. It’s not like he’s just taking and not giving. He’s a very genuine person. Usually the things you read about are only commercial things, but he does do charity things.”

Sam Alford, who was Steve’s high school coach at New Castle, wouldn’t comment on the individual endorsements. He acknowledged, however, that Steve’s image played a big part in getting the contracts.

“Anytime you have an Olympic gold medal and a national championship, that’s a good start,” said Sam. “Steve kept a good image throughout his high school and college careers, and I think that’s a part of it.

“Our main concern is doing a good job for Steve, to get what we could for him and his image. One of the reasons I decided to do this was there was only one person I had to be concerned about, and that was Steve.”

Alford’s contract with the American Dairy Assn. possibly will include both radio and television commercials, said Myrna Hazel, administrative officer for milk promotion services.

“Sam Alford remembered us working with Bill Keller, and he wrote to us,” she said. “We responded to his letter and set up a meeting. We thought it would be a good, clean, wholesome image for young people . . . someone they could look up to.

“We had a good working relation with Bill and hadn’t done anything like that since Bill retired from the Pacers (in 1976). We found young people do look up to Steve. We thought it would be a good image for us, and for milk.”

McDonald’s is using Alford to promote its Pan Am Games cup.

“When we began creating our idea for the commercial, we wanted someone connected with Pan Am Games and someone who is popular,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Jana Wilson. “We found he is special ambassador to basketball for the Pan Am Games (in Indianapolis in August). Realizing how popular he is, he seemed to be the obvious person for our commercial.

“Talking with people, everyone’s seen it and likes it,” she said.

Alford’s connection with Public Service Indiana stemmed from the utility’s plans to provide its customers information about electrical safety, Goss said.

“We first considered sending a letter to each of our customers with safety information and having that letter signed by one of our company officers.

“But we began thinking about how to make that more effective. It happens that a manager of our New Castle office is a friend of the Alford family, and it was he who first mentioned Steve as a spokesman for our safety campaign,” Goss said.

“He’s the one person who can attract the attention our message deserves and who cares strongly enough about safety to deliver it with sincerity.”

Possibly Alford’s first promotional venture was as a junior at Indiana, when he allowed his picture to be used on a sorority calendar that was being sold as a charity fund-raiser. But the NCAA ruled that it was against the association’s rules, even though Alford received no money for it, and suspended him for one game.

Since then, he has appeared in anti-drug commercials for the NCAA and has done other volunteer work for churches, schools, Boys’ Clubs and the American Cancer Society.