Media Contact: Lisa Chmiola Burns, M.S.
Corporate Market Director, American Heart Association
lisa.burns@heart.org
713.610-5026

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION SEEKING NAMING-RIGHTS SPONSOR FOR PAUL “BEAR” BRYANT COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACHING AWARDS

           HOUSTON-- The American Heart Association has begun a search for a naming-rights sponsor for the Paul “Bear” Bryant College Football Coaching Awards.

The Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year award is the only college football-coaching award that is voted on after all the bowl games have been played and the season is complete. The winner is determined by a vote of the members of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. This year’s awards ceremony will be held Jan. 17, 2008, in Houston. For the second year in a row, FOX Sports Net will produce a special awards program that will be televised nationwide as well.

           “We’re looking for a company with a national reach that can benefit from a presence in sports and an involvement with this prestigious award,” said Lisa Chmiola Burns, corporate market director for the American Heart Association in Houston. “At the same time, we need a partner that can help us achieve our mission, which is to build awareness for the prevention of heart disease and stroke and raise money to fund research to fight these diseases.”

Coach Bryant earned 323 career wins, six national championships, 29 bowl berths and retired as college football’s winningest coach. But there was one battle he didn’t win. Just 28 days after coaching his final game, he lost his fight with heart disease, the nation’s No. 1 killer.

Three years after his death, a partnership was formed with the Bryant family and the American Heart Association to raise lifesaving funds in Bryant’s memory. An existing sportswriters award became the Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year Award, with Joe Paterno as its first winner in 1986. 

Boise State’s Chris Petersen earned the honor in 2007 and Glenn “Bo” Schembechler was given the Lifetime Achievement Award. Former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

The American Heart Association is the nation’s largest voluntary nonprofit, dedicated to reducing death and disability from cardiovascular diseases through research, education and advocacy programs. Prevention and wellness outreach to all Americans, regardless of race, sex or age, is the goal of the American Heart Association. Since the Bryant Awards’ inception, the event has raised more than $2.9 million for these efforts.

Thanks to the efforts of the American Heart Association and its volunteers during the past 60 years, the organization has had a hand in nearly every major development in the treatment of heart disease and stroke, including CPR, bypass surgery, and pacemakers. Survivors are living longer, stronger lives due to advances in prevention and treatment.

Visit the American Heart Association online at www.americanheart.org/bearbryantawards