Marketing America.(Chris Barrett, Luke McCabe, First USA Corp.)(Brief Article)

Before the shadow of terrorism fell across the land, the two great neuroses of modern American life were probably the ubiquity of commercialism and the iniquity of paying for a college education. So as freshmen all over the United States try to put September 11 behind them and settle down to university life, it seems fitting that two of them have found a way to combine both these neuroses, using one to deal with the other--and revealing yet again the unexpected potential of the Internet to transform lives.

In one of those it-could-only-happen-in-America stories, two 18-year- old high-schoolers, Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe of Ocean City, New Jersey, have concluded a deal with First USA Corp., a mega-issuer of credit cards, to pay their first year of college--to the tune of $40,000 each. In exchange, they will be walking, talking billboards for First USA, sporting the company's logo on their T shirts and surfboards, making campus appearances and publicizing the company on their personal Web site.

How on earth did two utterly undistinguished young men--their passions being "golf, surfing, tennis, concerts and dating"--merit this largesse? They're hardly rock stars, tennis champs or budding Einsteins. No, they're just two regular guys with a heck of an idea. And as often occurs in America, they've hit pay dirt, not because they're special but because they thought of it first.

The two teenagers--invariably described in newspapers as "cool, blond and young"--were seniors at Ocean City's Haddonfield Memorial High School who thought it would be fun to go to college in California but realized their slender accomplishments probably precluded their winning a scholarship. Discouraged by prospective tuition fees of more than $30,000 a year, they saw Tiger Woods on television, his accouterments festooned with logos, and had an epiphany. Why not get someone to sponsor them, too?

That's where the Internet came in. It was the work of a moment to create a Web site and upload pictures of themselves, smiling and confident; in one, Barrett stands on a skateboard in tan shorts and white T shirt, while a grinning McCabe draws attention to the legend on the back of his friend's shirt: advertise here. please call for rates! Other pictures suggested your logo here on unlikely portions of the boys' anatomies. One message on the Web site ran: "We will drink your soda and eat your chips! Where we go, you go!"

It might have ended as the slightly ridiculous jape some of their classmates thought it was, but that's ...