Travis Hunter shoots up Heisman odds after breaking out pose

Only the two top quarterbacks in the country now have better odds at winning the Heisman than Colorado Buffaloes star Travis Hunter.

The wide receiver and defensive back’s odds shot up according to the bookmakers over the weekend with his wild performance in CU’s road upset of UCF.

While Hunter may be the best football player in the country, it’s still rare for a non-quarterback to win the award. Even more uncommon than the non-quarterback-Heisman is a two-way player thriving at this level of football and it’s this notion that may give Hunter a real shot at this year’s award for top player in college ball.

Many of college football’s top voices are all in on Hunter after his Heisman-pose-hitting performance where he caught nine passes for 89 yards with one touchdown while adding a pick on defense. Hunter now ranks in the top five nationally in receptions (46), receiving yards (561) and touchdown catches (6). He also made another interception earlier this season and a game-clinching forced fumble last week.

The bookies have moved Hunter from around 10th in the odds coming into Week 5 to third. And the odds went from a somewhat longshot at +2,000 to right there. Last week had a bunch of quarterbacks as well as Boise State’s star rusher Ashton Jeanty ahead of him, now it’s just the nation’s top two quarterbacks in Miami’s Cam Ward and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe. At the same, Milroe is now the favorite from Ward, after beating UGA this weekend.

Post-Week 5 Heisman Odds

Jalen Milroe, Alabama, QB (+200)
Cam Ward, Miami, QB (+500)
Travis Hunter, Colorado WR/CB (+600)
Ashton Jeanty, Boise State, RB (+1,000)
Nico Iamaleava, Tennessee, QB (+1,800)
Dillon Gabriel, Oregon, QB (+1,800)

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.