The Heisman Trophy is college football’s supreme individual honor, an annual tribute to the best player in the game, and more often than not it’s the country’s top quarterback who takes the prize. But this could be the year Colorado’s Travis Hunter breaks with tradition.
Hunter is college football’s mind-warping dual threat, a game-changing wide receiver and cornerback. It’s not uncommon for the nation’s best college football prospects to play offense and defense as high schoolers, especially if there aren’t enough bodies to fill out every position on the roster. At the highest levels of the college game, though, “ironman” players are confined to specialty roles on one side of the ball or the other. Why? Because why double the injury risk? Why mess with convention?
But Deion Sanders, aka Colorado’s Coach Prime, has never been one to bow to convention. Famously, he set the standard for modern day ironmen in professional sports at the turn of the century – dominating the NFL as a shutdown cornerback, big-play receiver and kick returner while also dazzling Major League Baseball with his prowess as a hitter and baserunner. When Sanders pivoted to coaching college football in 2020, jumping straight into the head job at Jackson State University, his first call was all-out recruiting blitz for Hunter, the nation’s top high school recruit as a defensive back.
Thing is, Hunter had already verbally agreed to play at Florida State, the school where Sanders broke onto the national scene, with the explicit intention of following the coach’s two-way trajectory. College football’s pundit class was convinced there was no way Sanders could talk Hunter out of that commitment to play for Jackson State – an historically Black college that competes one division down from Florida State. But it turns out all the coach had to say to him was: “If you come here, you’re playing both ways, right?” Which is to say: Unlike Florida State coach Mike Norvell, who envisioned deploying Hunter on offense situationally, Sanders expected him to never leave the field. That article of fact – along with the chance of catching passes from Shadeur Sanders, Coach Prime’s chosen quarterback – was enough to secure Hunter’s signature and seal a deal that turned college football upside down.
In 2023, his lone year at Jackson State, the nation finally got to see this 6ft bundle of fast-twitch muscle in action. What stood out more than the stats was the ease with which Hunter sustained his high playing level whether on offense or defense. When Jackson State played North Carolina Central in the 2022 Celebration Bowl, Black college football’s de facto national championship, I watched from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium stands slack-jawed in the waning seconds of regulation as Hunter sprinted to the end zone pylon, boxed out his man and pulled down a 19-yard touchdown pass to force overtime. It was one of two TD grabs Hunter had in the game to go with five total tackles: Heisman-worthy stuff. Unfortunately for Hunter, the performance didn’t have a prayer of swaying Heisman voters, who tend to look past potential candidates from HBCU and other small-time football programs in the NCAA’s second-tier Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
When Coach Prime left Jackson State for Colorado after that game and took his top recruits with him, there was considerable discussion in the media and online about whether those players could hack at the next level and whether Hunter could continue to play both ways and endure for the forthcoming 2023 season. But Hunter quickly put those doubts to rest, remaining on the field for a staggering 1,036 plays. Altogether, he finished with five receiving touchdowns, three interceptions and 30 tackles; that’s with him sitting out injured for a quarter of the season after he was targeted and knocked out of a game. At the time, the ESPN TV reporter relaying the news likened his injury to “losing two players in one”. Without their best skilled player, Buffaloes lost eight of their last nine games after starting 3-0. Coach Prime can’t say he wasn’t warned.
This year has been a different story, however. Colorado won nine games, with Hunter playing 80% of time (1,044 snaps). He leads the offense in (92), yards (1,152) and touchdowns (14) and the defense in interceptions (four) and pass breakups (11). Last Saturday against Oklahoma State, Hunter hauled in 10 passes for 116 yards and three touchdowns – and snagged an interception on the game’s first drive. This was all after Hunter had been overlooked for the Thorpe award (ie the trophy given to the nation’s best defensive back) while being heavily touted for the defensive player of the year (ie the Bednarik award).
“I’m gonna give him mine,” said Sanders, who won the award in 1988, before going on to become the first athlete to play in a Super Bowl and a World Series. “I ain’t using it, just sitting up there collecting dust.” He went on to call the Thorpe snub “the most idiotic thing in college football”. It’s enough to make you wonder whether it could complicate Hunter’s chances of winning the Heisman, too.
Since 2000, quarterbacks have won the Heisman 19 out of 23 years. Charles Woodson, the winner in 1997, is the only dedicated defensive player who has broken through. Like Hunter, Woodson is officially a cornerback, but what ultimately set him apart from his peers was his production as a receiver and a returner – even though he was nowhere near the menace Hunter is. Unlike Hunter, however, Woodson played his entire college career at Michigan. An FCS player has never won the Heisman trophy. What’s more discouraging: with Colorado ineligible for its conference game this week, Hunter is forced to rest his defense.
In the meantime, Oregon’s Dillion Gabriel and Miami’s Cam Ward will play on in hopes of keeping the Heisman in the quarterbacks’ pocket, as Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty bids to retake the award for his running back brethren while attempting to smash college football’s all-time rushing record. Heisman voters are such prisoners of the moment, after all. Come Sunday, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if they wound up remembering Hunter when he takes the field again for a postseason bowl game, after the Heisman voting has closed.
That would be a crying shame. No player this year has been as impactful, as exciting or as deserving as Hunter – who, by the way, is a straight-A student, too. He’s proven so undeniably good at playing both sides of the ball that NFL scouts, football’s most skeptical bunch, have let themselves entertain the idea of Hunter playing both ways in the pros, where he projects as a top-three pick. That he’s managed to change so many minds so quickly speaks to his everlasting impact on the game. All that’s missing now is the hardware.
