Travis Hunter gets another Big 12 honor as Heisman looks likely

Travis Hunter took home another Big 12 honor in his final week playing football in the conference and it’s that award-winning performance that likely capped his Heisman campaign.

Hunter was named Co-Offensive Player of the Week in the Big 12 alongside Baylor’s Sawyer Robertson, Texas Tech’s Tahj Brooks and Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo on Monday.

With 10 catches for 116 yards and three touchdowns, Hunter earned his second Offensive Player of the Week honor this season. He also became the first player in Big 12 history to score three touchdowns on offense while recording an interception. Hunter’s performance against Oklahoma State marked his seventh 100-yard receiving game of the season, adding to his single-season program record.

Hunter is now up to a Big 12-best 92 catches for 1,152 yards, which are second and third-best in Colorado Buffaloes history respectively. Hunter’s 14 receiving touchdowns is also a school record. He’s also added a rushing touchdown, four interceptions, one forced fumble, a conference-best 11 passes defended and 32 tackles from his defensive position of cornerback. Hunter’s success and skills match the mission of the Heisman— to recognize college football’s most outstanding player. The two-way star’s durability has allowed his campaign to blossom this season with the only doubt to his race coming in October when the Buffs player was limited in two games due to a shoulder injury.

Pre-conference championship Heisman Odds

Travis Hunter, Colorado, WR/CB (-10,000)
Ashton Jeanty, Boise State, RB (+2,500)
Dillon Gabriel, Oregon, QB (+30,000)
Shedeur Sanders, Colorado, QB (+40,000)

It’s a real surprise that a quarterback isn’t pacing the field this late. While Jeanty was the favorite for a time, his odds have fallen a lot. Briefly, a QB was on top with Hunter a few weeks ago but no more. Only four players who weren’t QBs have won the award since 2000, meaning Hunter capturing the trophy will be an outlier. Meanwhile, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders is in the finalists picture but he knows he won’t win—the Buffaloes quarterback is throwing his support behind Hunter despite leading the Big 12 in a ton of stats. There’s now a real chance both Buffaloes players end up in New York—though Sanders says he’ll be there as Hunter’s guest even if the committee doesn’t invite him as a player.

As for Hunter, there hasn’t been somebody who has seriously played both sides of the ball at this high of a level since Champ Bailey in 1998 and even then it wasn’t as full-time as Hunter. But you can go back just one more year to 1997 for something else—the last and only time in modern college football history that a defender won the award, Charles Woodson. Hunter would be the first full-time defender since Woodson to win it—though Woodson did play a limited amount on offense. Should Hunter take the award home, there hasn’t been a true two-way player score the honor since the legendary Ernie Davis in 1961, who was forced to play both sides due to college football’s archaic limited substitution rule at the time.