Why Colorado 2-way star Travis Hunter would follow Deion Sanders anywhere

April 17, 2024

The Athletic has live coverage of Colorado vs. Oregon in Week 4 college football action

SUWANEE, Ga., and BOULDER, Colo. — Deion Sanders worked quietly. Most of his conversations with Travis Hunter, the nation’s No. 1 recruit in the 2022 class, happened over the phone or on FaceTime.

“I had no idea he was even talking to Deion Sanders,” said Ethan Davis, a close friend to Hunter, the Colorado player who became a revelation during Week 1 of the college football season.

In recruiting circles, it appeared Hunter was all in on Florida State, which he committed to as a high school sophomore. Florida State sent its entire coaching staff to the 2021 7A state title game in Georgia, where Hunter led Collins Hill to the school’s first championship as a two-way star, playing cornerback on defense and receiver on offense. Meanwhile, Sanders and his staff at Jackson State never set foot on Collins Hill’s campus outside of Atlanta to recruit Hunter, who paid what many believed was a courtesy visit to the Mississippi-based Historically Black College and University in November 2021 for Homecoming.

Hunter grew up idolizing Sanders, the Hall of Fame cornerback and six-time NFL All-Pro, to the point that all Hunter ever wanted to do was play for Florida State, Sanders’ alma mater. As an underclassman, Hunter begged Collins Hill assistant Frontia Fountain to call his contacts at Florida State. But Deion got the job at Jackson State in 2020 and worked hard to build a relationship with both Hunter and his mother, Ferrante Edmonds.

And on Dec. 15, 2021, Hunter blindsided the sport and further legitimized Sanders as a college football coach and master recruiter. The nation’s top prospect was ditching one of the most recognizable brands in college football to sign with Jackson State, a lower-division FCS program.

“Why didn’t I go to FSU? Because Coach Prime. I wanted to play for the GOAT,” Hunter said recently on his Bleacher Report show “12Talks.” “I think he can teach me a lot of things that a lot of coaches couldn’t teach me. And he’s done it before, so I’d rather play for a coach that’s done it before, that can teach me a lot of things and invest in me the right way.”

GO DEEPER

Deion Sanders' success highlights flaws in hiring process

Jackson State fans got a taste of what’s possible for Travis Hunter last season. (Dale Zanine / USA Today)

After his freshman season in 2022, Hunter followed Sanders to Colorado, where the head coach took over the nation’s worst power conference program, which had gone 1-11 in 2022. Hunter was the cornerstone of a new prototype for college football — a fully flipped roster. The remade Buffaloes upset No. 17 TCU as a 20-point underdog Saturday. Despite temperatures that neared triple digits, Hunter starred on offense and defense, playing and dominating 129 snaps out of 160 total. He allowed three receptions on nine targets, broke up three passes, plucked a momentum-swinging interception at the goal line and led the team in receiving with 11 catches for 119 yards.

Hunter announced himself as the rarest kind of player in college football, one many thought was extinct: a true two-way star who could be an all-conference caliber talent (or better) on offense and defense. The Shohei Ohtani of college football, a modern-day Dick Butkus. And he’s doing it for the player he grew up loving — a player who also dabbled as a two-way star in the NFL — even if it meant painfully spurning the school he dreamed of suiting up for since he was a boy.

When Hunter’s star turn Saturday afternoon was finished, he donned a shirt featuring a collage of photos of Deion Sanders playing for the Dallas Cowboys.

“(In high school) he would watch clips of Deion, did the same dances, played defensive back and receiver like Deion,” said Hayden Gregory, an assistant on Collins Hill’s staff. “If Deion went to Alaska University, Travis would have followed him.”

Midway through the third quarter of Saturday’s win, Colorado led 24-21 when TCU reached the 4-yard line. Hunter was assigned to play man defense on TCU receiver Dylan Wright, but when he saw the Frogs’ Major Everhart motion out of the backfield, he recognized the play from game prep earlier in the week.

Once he saw Wright run a drag route underneath, Hunter was certain and bailed on his assignment to make the play. He took two steps to his right and baited quarterback Chandler Morris into throwing it Everhart’s way before teleporting to the ball as Morris released it.

The result: a game-changing interception that cemented Hunter’s two-way bona fides with millions watching him for the first time.

TRAVIS HUNTER

A STAR IS BORN FOR @CUBuffsFootball 🔥🦬 pic.twitter.com/vz8vhUVrJ4

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 2, 2023

Then in the fourth quarter, with the Buffs leading 38-35 and facing a third-and-16 on their own 19, Hunter made another tide-turning catch, this time on offense. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son who also followed his father from Jackson State, lofted a ball down the middle of the field. It was underthrown, so Hunter slowed his stride, jockeyed for position and secured the ball for a gain of 43 yards with a defender draped all over him. He stood up and coolly signaled first down. Three plays later, Colorado was in the end zone.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

What a pass and what a catch by Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter 🤯 pic.twitter.com/tzpOQFw8ce

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 2, 2023

It confirmed the uncommon abilities of Hunter, who was limited to eight games by an ankle injury as a freshman at Jackson State. He did impact both offense and defense for the Tigers, albeit on a smaller stage, notching four touchdowns on 18 receptions on offense; defensively, he gave up 285 yards and 16 catches on 37 targets with two interceptions and without surrendering a touchdown, according to Pro Football Focus.

Still, it’s fair to tap the brakes and wonder if what Hunter did Saturday is sustainable over the course of a power conference schedule. He trained for this in preseason practice when he was the team’s only player wearing a blue jersey, spending one day working mostly with the defense then flipping to offense the next. Highlight catches as a receiver were commonplace, and he quickly separated himself as the team’s top cornerback. Yet there’s a reason two-way stars have gone the way of rotary phones. Expecting Hunter to replicate what he did against TCU on a weekly basis would be unprecedented from strictly a usage standpoint, let alone production.

Sanders, though, is adamant this season about resting Hunter in practice early in the week, and Hunter dealt with a minor hamstring issue during preseason camp.

“I know what he’s gonna do, and I’ve gotta keep him strong because I went through this. I did this before. I identify with who he is and how he is and what he is and what he needs to do to continuously be who he is,” Sanders said Monday on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

Record books tend to be written by pioneers. And should Hunter manage to maintain a semblance of last weekend’s performance over the coming months, the only question will be where he should display his Heisman Trophy.

“I tried to tell you, but you ain’t wanna believe me,” Sanders said postgame when asked if Hunter could keep this up. “Travis is Him, like the young folks say. Travis is it.”

Hunter moved with his family from Palm Beach, Fla., to Gwinnett County, Ga., in the spring of his eighth-grade year.

Gregory still remembers the day during summer workouts in 2018 when a skinny kid and his stepfather approached and asked about registering the rising ninth grader for football.

“I’m looking at this kid thinking, ‘He’s going to be a freshman?'” said Gregory, whose father Lenny Gregory was the head coach of Collins Hill at the time. “He was light, but you just could tell he was rangy and fast. I asked what position he played and his stepdad said wherever we wanted him. I was like, ‘Sounds good to me.'”

Hunter worked his way to a starting cornerback role as a freshman, which is almost unheard of in the top division of Georgia high school football. He even took snaps as a receiver, earning further respect from the coaching staff as an undersized but willing blocker. In the second half of his freshman year, Collins Hill played a spring game against nearby Lanier High, which had a highly touted top-100 prospect. That brought out coaches from all of the SEC programs in the region, and Hunter took advantage, snagging two early interceptions. Auburn offered him a scholarship at halftime.

“Outside of probably Dade and Broward (in Florida), Gwinnett is the most talented county in the country,” said Erik Richards, the national scouting director for the high school All-American Bowl and a native of Gwinnett County.

Yet by his sophomore season, Hunter was already a household name throughout the state, garnering scholarship offers from every top-flight college program. By Hunter’s junior season, Collins Hill realized it couldn’t afford to take him off the field. He started both ways at cornerback and wide receiver, drawing comparisons to Georgia legend Champ Bailey.

“That’s a good comp, but listen, Champ Bailey couldn’t hold Travis’ jock when it comes to running routes,” Richards said. “To be the best two-way player to ever come through with the long list of names to come out of that county is quite an accomplishment.”

The Eagles weren’t a perennial power, but Hunter elevated the program, leading Collins Hill to back-to-back state championship appearances his junior and senior seasons alongside four-star quarterback Sam Horn, who’s now at Missouri. Hunter finished his high school career with a state-record 48 touchdown receptions, nearly 4,000 receiving yards and 19 interceptions.

“I played and coached with and against future NFL players. Travis is the greatest football player I’ve ever seen,” Gregory said. “Truly. He would make plays that would drop my jaw.”

So many of the stories from Hunter’s four years at Collins Hill seem almost apocryphal. How he would devour an entire bag of gummy bears before games. The blow-by go-routes and one-handed catches, or how he would trash-talk opposing defensive backs, telling them before a play what route he was going to run and then dusting them with it for a touchdown.

Shedeur Sanders, left, and Travis Hunter have become the faces of Colorado and Deion Sanders’ unprecedented rebuild. (Louis Grasse / Getty Images)

Hunter ate his vegetables, too. He was studious about film study, asking where he needed to get better and sitting in on game planning with the coaches. He would even stand next to Gregory on the sideline and help call plays during freshman games.

“He’s got a high, high football IQ. I mean high,” said Richards. “Understands angles, coverages, where the linebackers are supposed to be. It’s just off the charts.”

It was a minor coup that Collins Hill was able to hold onto a player of Hunter’s caliber for four years in such a hotbed of high school football, but Hunter was driven by two things: competitiveness and loyalty, his high school coaches said. He wanted to be great. Hunter moved in with Fountain for two years when his grades slipped and his family moved out of the area, working tirelessly to graduate a semester early as a senior and enroll at Jackson State for spring practice, encouraged in part by a crucial phone conversation with Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star Cam Newton.

Hunter intends to build on his legacy at Collins Hill, telling his coaches he’s in the process of buying his family a house in the area, using his name, image and likeness earnings, so his younger brother can attend the school.

“He’s probably the most loyal kid you’ll ever meet,” Fountain said. “If he’s down with you, he’s down with you.”

Reeling in the nation’s No. 1 prospect turned Sanders’ rebuilding project at Jackson State from a sideshow into something else almost overnight.

“He didn’t have to be at a Florida State. He could be Travis Hunter at Jackson State,” said Drew Swick, current head coach at Collins Hill and a former assistant. “We told him, if you’re good, they can find you.”

For many in the sport, Hunter’s decision forced athletic directors to consider: What could Sanders do on our campus? Colorado elected to find out. Hunter likewise endorsed Sanders in the eyes of recruits. Coach Prime was only in Colorado two months before he landed the nation’s No. 1 cornerback in the Class of 2023, Cormani McClain.

GO DEEPER

'What do I have to do?' Inside the phone calls that helped shape Coach Prime

“Travis loves fishing. I love fishing. Travis is pretty much a homebody. I’m pretty much a homebody. He’s really a recluse to a point like I am as well when I don’t know people and kind of standoffish, but when I’m in a crowd I turn into Him, that dude,” Sanders said on the McAfee show. “Travis is all these things times two, man.”

Hunter’s bet on playing for Sanders — made twice — and that any interest in him would follow wherever he landed, appears to be paying off.

With Fox’s cameras and microphones on him in the moments after Colorado secured the win over TCU, Deion hugged Shedeur, who threw for a school-record 510 yards and four touchdowns, around the neck.

“My son right here,” he said, before taking his left hand, grabbing the top of Hunter’s head and pulling his face in close until their cheeks were pressed together. “And my other son. Man, I’m loving these kids.”

As one of the preeminent faces on the most scrutinized team, and a level of two-way player some thought the sport would never see again, Hunter has the potential to enter a new class of college football superstardom. And he’s fluent in doing the unexpected.

“I don’t have a limit of snaps. I want to play all of them. I don’t like to be off the field,” Hunter said. “Being off the field on the sideline is boring.”

(Top photo: Andy Cross / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k3Fqa2ljbHxzfJFsZmlxX2WCcLDEoqanZaOWu6Wx0axkraqRq7a0eceupa2domKwsLjOq5idp18%3D