When politicians are running for office, they will often spend vast amounts of money and time to get their name out in an effort to familiarize voters of, if nothing else, their names.

This is quite often the case in athletics, too, as demonstrated by the official Northeastern athletics Web site’s newest page – www.gobarea.com. The site, dedicated to senior men’s basketball point guard Jose Juan Barea, is linked from the main athletics page, <a href="http://www.gonu.com“>www.gonu.com.

I’ll admit when I first got wind of the site, I thought it was a joke or something a fan of Barea’s made, but after checking it out I realized its purpose – to give anyone who visits gonu.com the chance to see Barea’s stats, some plays and most importantly, an opportunity to vote for him for various awards.

Your first thought might be that it’s wrong for the university to do that, and that it’s a conflict of interest. But in actuality there is no conflict of interest. The only argument that I can think of against it is why it wasn’t unveiled at the beginning of the season.

It makes perfect sense for Northeastern to create such a site, and they are not even close to being the first school to do this.

Going into his senior year at Oregon, Detroit Lions quarterback Joey Harrington was considered a top-five candidate for the Heisman trophy; however, a common thought in 2001 was that Harrington wouldn’t have a fair shot at the prized award because he played on the west coast at a Pac-10 school.

Now, obviously, that notion has been proven wrong in the last few years with Carson Palmer (2002), Matt Lienart (2004) and Reggie Bush (2005) – all of USC – winning the award. At the time, a Pac-10 player hadn’t won the award since Marcus Allen (again from USC) in 1981.

To increase Harringtons visibility on the east coast, The Oregon athletic department spent $250,000 to put a 10-story sized poster of him in New York City. Unfortunately, the venture did not bring the Heisman to Oregon, but the Ducks, who have money to spend – see Oregon alum Phil Knight, chief executive officer and cofounder of Nike – received a boat-load of press for it. So while it didn’t work, the school’s athletic department displayed just how far they were willing to go in order for one of their players to receive national acclaim.

Now, I don’t know how much the Web site cost to build, but I cannot fathom it being $250,000. And despite having the best stats among point guards in the nation, Barea will probably need the help.

Although the Bob Cousy Award, given to the nation’s top guard, has only been around for two seasons, the two recipients (Jameer Nelson and Raymond Felton) have been from national championship-contending teams.

With such a small sampling, it’s not definite that Barea can bring home the award, but the site certainly won’t hurt his chances.

However, one thing that does sit a little uneasy with me is the extravagance of the site. It’s sharp, don’t get me wrong, but is it too much? I don’t feel I can make an objective call on that because I’ve covered the team since his freshman year, and I already know how good Barea is. Will fans that have never seen Barea play be sold by the complimentary quotes on every page of the site or will it look a little overdone? Like I said before, no matter how hard I try I can’t be objective but, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a little much.

That being said, I don’t mind it at all and everyone I’ve spoken to thinks the site can only do good for the program as a whole.

Now if they were spending $250,000 on the site it’d be a different story, but say they did and JJB was named first-team All-American and/or won the Cousy Award