By doing two jobs — and doing them both as well as any player in the country — Travis Hunter delivered on coach Deion Sanders’ hype and brought the Heisman Trophy to Colorado.
The Buffaloes’ two-way superstar won college football’s most prestigious individual player of the year award Saturday night, edging Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty to become CU’s second winner and first in 30 years.
Hunter joins the late Rashaan Salaam, who won the Heisman in 1994 with a 2,000-yard rushing season with Colorado.
With Hunter and Jeanty on top, the 90th Heisman handout marked the first since 2015 with no quarterbacks in the top two of voting. Three straight and seven of the last eight Heisman winners had played quarterback. Dating back to 2000, 20 Heisman winners had been QBs.
It took two remarkable performances to break the trend.
Hunter has been both an unguardable receiver and a lock-down cornerback, validating Sanders’ decision to let the five-star recruit loose on both sides of the ball in a way that makes the junior incomparable to any Heisman winner in over a half century.
You’d have to go back to the waning days of one-platoon football in the 1950s and early ’60s to find Heisman winners making major contributions on offense and defense as Navy’s Joe Bellino (1960) and Syracuse’s Ernie Davis (1961).
Michigan’s Charles Woodson is the closest comp to Hunter among recent winners. Woodson was a star cornerback for the national champion Wolverines and moon-lighted as a wide receiver and return man.
Even Woodson, who won the Heisman in 1997, doesn’t think of himself as a two-way player.
“They sprinkled me out there (on offense) when they needed a play. I didn’t do a whole lot of offense,” Woodson said. “Travis actually plays both sides of the ball. You can say he’s a two-way player that played defense, but I’m still the only defensive player to win it.”
Hunter played 688 defensive snaps and 672 on offense as Colorado jumped from four wins to nine in Sanders’ second season as coach. And Hunter’s production at both positions was elite.
He heads into the postseason — and Hunter plans to play Colorado’s bowl game — fifth in the country in catches with 92, sixth in yards receiving at 1,152 and second in touchdown catches with 14. He also leads the team with four interceptions. Earlier this week, Hunter won the Bednarik Award as the nation’s best defensive player and the Biletnikoff, which goes to the top receiver.
Sanders, the football Hall of Famer and two-sport pro during his playing days, never held back when it came to touting Hunter for the Heisman, even over his talented son, CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
“Travis gets my vote. Travis is the best player in college football,” Sanders said in November. “Truly Shedeur is that guy. He’s the catalyst, he makes everything go and enables Travis to be Travis, but Travis Hunter is doing something we’ve never seen before.”
Jeanty only played one position, but few in college football history have ever played it better. His decision to return to Boise State for a third year instead of transferring to a Power 5 school changed the course of the season. Jeanty heads into the College Football Playoff needing 132 yards rushing to break Barry Sanders’ hallowed record of 2,628 in 1988. Sanders finished his Heisman-winning season with a stunning 2,850, including his bowl performance, and did it all in only 12 games.
Still, Jeanty has blown past his modern-day peers — and opposing defenses — this season. Jeanty leads the country with 2,497 yards rushing and 30 touchdowns. He has five runs of at least 70 yards this season. Only five other players have two.
Jeanty is the first player from outside the traditional power conferences to finish as high as second in Heisman voting since San Diego State running back Marshall Faulk in 1992.
Jeanty would have been the first running back since Derrick Henry in 2015 to win the Heisman, but Hunter’s unique season was too good to overcome.
Hunter’s path to the stage Saturday night in midtown Manhattan was also unique.
One of the top high-school recruits in the country in 2022 coming out of Georgia, the Florida native flipped a verbal commitment to Florida State on signing day to go to Jackson State, the historically black university in Mississippi where Sanders began his college coaching career.
No player rated as highly as Hunter had ever signed with an FCS program out of high school. He was limited to nine games because of injuries as a freshman, flashing star potential on both sides of the ball.
When Sanders left for Colorado, Hunter, who says his coach is like a father, followed him to Boulder to help rebuild a program coming off a 1-11 season.
Again, Hunter was limited to nine games in 2023 after taking a late hit against Colorado State that left him with a lacerated liver. The injuries never deterred Sanders from playing Hunter as much as possible, and this season there was no denying the results.
Led by Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, Colorado contended for the Big 12 title until the final weekend of the regular season.
With the expanded playoff casting a wider net on games with postseason implications this season, Hunter made a strong closing statement: 10 catches for 116 yards and three touchdowns, plus an interception in a 52-0 victory against Oklahoma State.
The fifth through 10th Heisman vote getters were Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo, Army quarterback Bryson Daily, Penn State tight end Tyler Warren, Shedeur Sanders, Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke and Syracuse quarterback Kyle McCord.
Hunter has one more game left in the Alamo Bowl against BYU before it’s off to the NFL, where he is expected to be one of the first players taken in April’s draft. Already many are wondering which position he will play in the pros.
Hunter’s historic season suggests why not both?
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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