Travis Hunter makes history, wins college football’s biggest award
Dec 14, 2024, 6:54 PM | Updated: Dec 17, 2024, 2:01 pm
Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night for his incredible season leading the Colorado Buffaloes.
The Heisman Trophy Trust presented Hunter with the award in New York City, where he beat out fellow finalists Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel, Miami quarterback Cam Ward and Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty.
Hunter’s season has been unprecedented, becoming the first player to truly play both sides of the ball and do it at a high level in modern college football times. He finished with a Big 12-best 92 catches for 1,152 yards, which were the fifth and sixth-best in NCAA this year. Hunter’s 14 receiving touchdowns was a school record, conference-best and second-best in the nation. He’s also added a rushing touchdown on a jet sweep. It’s for all of this on offense that Hunter the Biletnikoff Award for the best wide receive for the best wide receiver in the country. Hunter joins DeVonta Smith, as the lone wide receiver to take home the Heisman in the last 50 years but unlike the former Crimson Tide standout, that was just half of Hunter’s game.
Defensively, Hunter racked up 31 tackles, 11 pass breakups, four interceptions, 15 passes defended as well as a game-winning forced fumble on defense. Those ball-hawking skills placed Hunter at or near the top of the Big 12 leaderboard which is why he won the Chuck Bednarik Award as the top defensive player in the country. Hunter is the first player to be named the country’s top pass-catcher and defender.
Hunter played 688 defensive snaps and 672 offensive snaps. He was the only FBS player this season with 150-plus snaps on both offense and defense and the only Power 4 conference player with 30-plus snaps on both sides. PFF graded Hunter as the best receiver in the country to play 450-plus snaps and the sixth-best. Hunter is the first FBS player in the last quarter century with three touchdowns and an interception in a game and he has two of the four instances of multiple touchdowns and an interception since 1996 in FBS. He also was the first and just one of two FBS/NFL players with 50 receiving yards, a rushing touchdown and an interception, joining Champ Bailey who did it in the NFL. Hunter also created the 150 receiving yards and four pass breakups in a game club.
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 is the first full-time defender since Woodson to win it—though Woodson did play a limited amount on offense. Hunter is the first true two-way player to 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.
Hunter was essential as part of Colorado’s turnaround under Deion Sanders. Going from 1-11 before the pair showed up in Boulder, to 4-8 last season and 9-3 this year. It was CU’s just second nine-win season in the previous 22 years. Because of where Hunter started school, at Jackson State, he is the first former HBCU player to win the Heisman, Doug Williams in 1977 and Steve McNair in 1994 were the only ones with that distinction to be named finalists. Unlike those two players, Hunter is not a quarterback which is rare too. He is one of just five players who weren’t QBs who have won the award since 2000.
For the Buffs, Hunter joins Rashaan Salaam as the only Heisman winners in school history—the running back won the trophy in 1994. Salaam and Hunter are two of just five CU players to be named finalists for the award or be a runner-up (Bryon White 1937, Darian Hagan 1989 and Eric Bieniemy 1990.)
Hunter’s success and skills matched the mission of the Heisman— to recognize college football’s most outstanding player. The two-way star’s durability allowed his campaign to blossom this season with the only dip coming in October when the Buffs player was limited in two games due to a shoulder injury—meaning his unreal season could’ve been just a tad bit better.