Not many athletes can claim to be better than Deion Sanders – the only person to play in a Super Bowl and a World Series – a true legend immortalized in every possible hall of fame.
But Deion, now known to many as Coach Prime, believes one of his students is better than he was back in college … and he might be right. Travis Hunter enters his junior season with the Colorado Buffaloes as a possible Heisman Trophy candidate and an undeniable projected top-10 pick. Sanders, a two-time All-American, was selected fifth overall in the 1989 NFL Draft after an incredible college career at Florida State that was capped off with an eighth-place finish for the 1988 Heisman Trophy. Hunter could tie his coach for All-American honors with one more season this year, and if he stays healthy, that could mean a real shot at the Heisman Trophy as well.
That’s because Hunter finished the season with the most snaps played in the FBS despite missing three and a half games. He played 436 snaps on offense, 566 on defense and 30 on special teams, topping the 115 plays per game average. Last season, he broke numerous records for his contributions on both sides of the ball for the Buffs. He caught 57 passes for 721 yards and five touchdowns on offense, while on defense he made 30 tackles and three interceptions.
What most people tend to forget is that his All-Athlete head coach Sanders – who played on both sides of the ball in the NFL and also had a stint in professional sports in MLB – played neither offense nor defense when he was with the Seminoles.
“Travis is better, at this age and at this stage he is better,” Sanders said Friday of his star, who plays in both directions.
Although Sanders was a two-sport star, he didn’t really become a two-way star in football until his fourth season, and didn’t play seriously as a wide receiver except for the 1996 season. That year, the Dallas Cowboys drafted Sanders in place of Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, who was battling cocaine charges and a collarbone injury. Sanders finished his NFL career that year with similar stats to Hunter at CU: he caught 60 balls for 784 yards and three offensive touchdowns. Of course, Sanders is also one of the best returners in NFL history, catching six kicks in his career.
Hunter hasn’t incorporated the comeback into his game yet, but he’ll have to take a breather at some point. Sanders said he’s the best man to oversee that.
“He’s a good person, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t whore out, he doesn’t do crazy things,” Sanders said. “He’s got one of the highest GPAs on the team, he’s a great person, he can play, his character is second to none. So I don’t mind fishing with him. And he’s coming to Texas. And we don’t talk about fishing on the boat, although we talk about bullshit all the time, but we talk about life. We talk about the next step. We talk about land acquisition. We talk about so many different things in life, fatherhood, you know, love, how family plays a part in all of this. So it’s just a joy to have caught him right out of high school.”
Hunter has one more year to prove he can do something we’ve never seen before – play on both sides of the ball all game long in modern elite football. No one knows if he’ll try that in the NFL or what that will look like, so look forward to the next dozen Buffs games because we may not see anything like Hunter for a long time.
