He said his heart pounded and his breathing stopped Saturday night, when the presenter of the Heisman Trophy began opening an envelope to reveal the winner and said "in the closest vote ever ..." The Stanford running back had dreamed about this moment as a young boy, striking the famous stiff-armed pose of the trophy in his family kitchen.

But as soon as the name "Mark Ingram" came out of the presenter's mouth, Gerhart had to run toward another goal. Just as he had done all season, Gerhart tried to score for Stanford.

He said he couldn't second-guess his decision to shun artificial promotions on his behalf, which might have yielded those meager 28 points separating him from Ingram. "I take pride in the fact that (the second-place finish) was earned," he said, "that it was from a team that wasn't expected to do that much, from a team that hadn't been to a bowl game in eight years."

Still, Gerhart had more total rushing yards and touchdowns than Ingram, whom he beat out for the Doak Walker Award, honoring the nation's premier running back, earlier in the week. Ingram is just a sophomore, with at least one more college season to claim the Heisman, and his Alabama team will play for the national title next month.

How could Gerhart not agonize over whether Ingram won through regional biases, which tend to discount West Coast football, or the voters' unreasonable preference for marquee players on national contenders? How could he not cringe at how close he had come?

His father, Todd, said he thought his son might feel disappointment in mid-life, when he had no more football to play. Instead of showing the trophy to his grandchildren, he'd have to tell them how he barely missed winning it.

"Now, I think it matters more to him that he helped Stanford get turned around," Todd Gerhart said, "and set the stage for (quarterback) Andrew Luck to be here next year."

For most of the last week, Gerhart, the player who didn't want to promote himself, has functioned as a walking billboard for his school and his team. Future recruits already know that after Jim Harbaugh became the coach three seasons ago, the Cardinal transformed themselves from a hapless 1-11 team to the Achilles' heel of USC's Trojans. They became Pac-10 contenders, 8-4 and bowl-bound.

But producing a Heisman Trophy candidate makes an entirely different statement about a program. It says that Stanford can be a star-maker, not just a scrapper that periodically takes down unsuspecting favorites.

By taking more classes this grading period than the typical Stanford student, Gerhart made yet another statement. During introductions Saturday night, the announcer calmly touted Gerhart's rushing stats - the nation-leading 26 touchdowns and 1,736 yards - but went into an awed gush when he described his course load. "Twenty-one units," he said.

If he could survive six extra credits and still be seated in the Nokia Theater waiting to hear if he had won the Heisman, then apparently, Stanford academics can happily co-exist with grand football ambitions.

"I don't think I'd recommend taking 21 units during the season," Gerhart said. "Looking back on it, I don't think I'd do that again."

He had finished a take-home exam at an Orlando hotel at 2:30 in the morning Thursday, when he won the Doak Walker Award. After that, he took an archaeology final, with sports information director Jim Young as his proctor. Then they flew to New York, where Gerhart had some fun with the four other finalists, touring the city and going to the top of the Empire State building.

Ingram may have brought Alabama's first Heisman Trophy back to Tuscaloosa, but in a short video, Gerhart took the entire ceremony onto the Stanford campus. He said his guided tour of the school - unique among the five finalists' biographical sketches - was entirely the producer's idea. But once again, Gerhart got to sell Stanford to future recruits. In one scene, he gazed fondly at a copy of Jim Plunkett's 1970 Heisman - further dispelling the image of Stanford as a football wasteland.

"It's an honor to be here to represent Stanford, the great university that it is," he said after Ingram claimed the 2009 trophy, perfectly stiff-arming suggestions of distress.

E-mail Gwen Knapp at gknapp@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle