Was a Travis Hunter Heisman victory foreshadowed on Thursday night?
The Colorado defensive back and wide receiver became the first player to win the Bednarik Award and the Biletnikoff Award on Thursday night. The Bednarik Award is given to the best defensive player in college football and the Biletnikoff Award is given to the best wide receiver.
The Biletnikoff Prize was first awarded in 1994 and the Bednarik Prize was created a year later.
While Hunter may not have the best stats of any wide receiver or defensive player, his contributions on both sides of the ball surely played a role in his victories. Hunter is the prohibitive favorite to win the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night ahead of other finalists Ashton Jeanty, Dillon Gabriel and Cam Ward.
Hunter has 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns as a wide receiver and added a rushing touchdown against Utah for good measure. Defensively, he has 32 tackles and four interceptions along with 11 passes defensed. He will surely be an All-American for the second consecutive season. In his first season in Colorado, Hunter had 30 tackles and three interceptions in nine games and also recorded 57 receptions for 721 yards and five touchdowns.
The junior has already said he will be heading to the NFL after this season and will likely be a top-five pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, even if he will only play primarily on one side of the ball.
What Hunter has done is unprecedented in modern college football. Few players have had the opportunity to play both offense and defense. The closest recent comparison to Hunter at the college level is Champ Bailey. The Football Hall of Famer had 47 receptions for 744 yards at Georgia in 1998 and was a shutdown cornerback on defense with three interceptions. He finished seventh in Heisman voting.
Hunter, however, did not win defensive back or defensive player of the year. The Jim Thorpe Award for best DB went to Texas’ Jahdae Barron and the Nagurski Award for defensive player of the year (other than Bednarik) went to South Carolina defensive end Kyle Kennard.
Hunter, somehow, was not a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award. His Thorpe Award-winning trainer Deion Sanders was not happy about this.
If Hunter doesn’t win the Heisman, it will likely fall to Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty. It was no surprise that Jeanty won the Doak Walker Award for top running back Thursday night. Jeanty already has the fourth-most rushing yards in a single season in college football history. With at least one College Football Playoff game left, Jeanty is 132 yards away from passing Barry Sanders for most yards in a single season. At the moment, Jeanty’s 344 carries are the same number of carries Sanders had in his 1988 Heisman-winning season.
Both Ward and Gabriel are considered longshots to win the Heisman on Saturday night. Ward won the Davey O’Brien Award for the best quarterback on Thursday.