‘People say I can’t be real’: Colorado two-way star Travis

• Adam Rittenberg, ESPN Senior WriterAug 28, 2024, 07:00 AM ET

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  • College football reporter.
  • Joined ESPN.com in 2008.
  • Graduate of Northwestern University.

At the EA Sports College Football 25 cover shoot in March, Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter gathered near midfield at the Cotton Bowl alongside fellow cover athletes Quinn Ewers and Donovan Edwards.

The photographer asked Hunter to toss a football in the air, dash downfield and then catch a pass from Ewers, the Texas quarterback. After warming up with Edwards, the Michigan running back — throwing spirals with both arms — Hunter was ready.

“Watch this,” he told the camera, launching the ball toward the blue Dallas sky. He then raced 50 yards toward the end zone to haul in Ewers’ pass. The sequence would promote the game, but also underscore that Hunter is no ordinary player.

Who else would be asked to throw the ball and also catch it? If he could clone himself, Hunter, who starts at both cornerback and wide receiver for Colorado, would be able to defend the pass, too.

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“The plays he makes out there on the field, it’s not normal,” Ewers said.

Hunter stretches the imagination of what an elite college player can do. Six months before the EA Sports cover shoot, he showcased his vast talents 40 miles from the Cotton Bowl, at TCU in Fort Worth, as Colorado made its debut under coach Deion Sanders, the Pro Football Hall of Famer. In sweltering heat, Hunter logged 146 plays from scrimmage, recording an interception and 11 receptions, as Colorado upset the reigning national runner-up.

Hunter would eclipse 100 plays in seven games, topping out at 150 against Stanford. According to ESPN Stats and Information research, he finished with 1,007 plays for the season — 572 on defense, 412 on offense and 23 on special teams. Despite missing three games and nearly an entire half against Colorado State with a lacerated liver, Hunter recorded the most plays in the FBS and averaged 111.9 per game, 19 more than any other player.

He won the Paul Hornung Award as the nation’s most versatile player, and earned All-America or all-league honors as both a cornerback and an all-purpose player, recording three interceptions, eight pass deflections and 30 tackles (two for loss). He also had 57 receptions for 721 yards and five touchdowns, significant jumps from his totals at Jackson State the previous season (18 receptions, 188 yards).

The claim that Hunter is the nation’s best — trumpeted by Deion Sanders and others — will generate a range of reactions, but there is no one quite like him in the sport right now, or really in recent memory. A great offensive player will occasionally play defense, or vice versa, but the split in time and production is usually much more pronounced.

“Pretty often, people say I can’t be real, and it’s amazing what I do,” Hunter told ESPN.

Hunter has been playing this way since he took up football at 4-years-old. He has maintained a do-it-all approach while rising up the ranks, and intends to keep playing both ways in the NFL next season. How does he pull it off? Natural ability helps, but other factors — discipline, nutrition, time management, recovery — have made Hunter a game player come to life.

The first step is being boring.

HUNTER IS ONE of the most recognizable faces in college football, especially in the NIL era. He has 1.3 million followers on both Instagram and TikTok, where he provides glimpses of his life away from football, often wearing animal onesies alongside his fiancee, Leanna Lenee (the couple got engaged in February).

On occasion, Hunter will appear at events, getting the celebrity treatment. In October, he sat courtside at the Denver Nuggets’ season opener with Deion Sanders and Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders. But most of his off-field content comes from his home, which makes sense.

“I don’t like to party, I don’t like to go out,” Hunter said. “I barely like talking to people sometimes.”

He puts his life into buckets: football, school, fishing, games and spending time with Lenee. Football requires much of Hunter’s time and energy — especially to excel at two positions on opposite sides of the ball — but his discipline not to deviate from the other areas keeps him grounded.

“I literally wake up, go do my football stuff, get my recovery in and I’m back at home,” he said. “Football, school, fishing and playing my game. That’s it.”

Hunter earned first-team All-America honors on the field last season, his first in the FBS after transferring in from Jackson State. He also was a first-team academic All-American, becoming just the second Colorado player to receive both recognitions and the first since 1961 (Joe Romig). The psychology major earned a 4.0 GPA during the fall 2023 semester, and made the Pac-12 Academic Honor Roll.

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Shortly after the school year ended at Colorado, Hunter came to Athletic Performance Ranch, a speed and athletic training facility in Fort Worth. The ranch has several ponds where Hunter could fish, as well as a gym where he could play basketball.

He was there in May when he turned 21, staying in a rental home and training 2-3 times per day. Lenee had surprised him with a customized Ram 1500 TRX truck, and AP Ranch found a spot for a birthday party.

“We cleared it out for everybody to go, so he could get out somewhere, figuring most young men his age, they’re getting ready to hit the town,” said Greg Sholars, director of AP Ranch and a longtime college track coach. “Travis got in the truck, drove 10 minutes straight to the gym, and played basketball.

“It makes you excited to work with him, because every inch and every ounce of him is dedicated to being a great athlete.”

Hunter first grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida, before moving to Suwanee, Georgia, where he attended high school. His lifestyle stems from an environment he describes as “pretty bad.” Staying in meant staying out of trouble.

While his family lived in a small apartment inside a converted hotel in Suwanee, Hunter spent more time around the football offices, said Drew Swick, who coached Hunter at Collins Hill High School. When Hunter’s grades slipped a bit midway through his time at Collins Hill, he moved in with assistant coach Frontia Fountain.

As Hunter grew older and closer to a professional athletic career, he recognized and embraced the limits he needed to place away from football.

“I’ve never been tempted,” he said. “I love my lifestyle. I love being the boring person I am.”

AFTER THE SPRING semester ended at Colorado, Hunter was looking for a spot to speed-train and, through a mutual friend, connected with Sholars. When they met, Sholars asked Hunter about his goals and explained that he wanted to stress cardiovascular and endurance work, as it helps recovery and prevents or reduces injury.

“He says, ‘Oh, coach, you don’t have to worry about that. I can run all day,'” Sholars recalled. “I kind of smirk, like, ‘OK, we’ll see.’ Well, he can, he truly can. I’ve coached Olympic-level sprinters, quarter-milers, and I can honestly say I can put Travis on the track with any of them.

“He’s the kind of kid that you want to do a biopsy and see what in the heck is made of.”

Sholars had Hunter run a standard set of 100-meter sprints with short breaks in between. While many athletes need to be pushed by the sixth or seventh sprint, Hunter became “faster and faster and faster,” Sholars said.

At AP Ranch, Hunter would train with longer runs in the morning to boost his endurance, then speed and footwork, and also lifting. Sholars didn’t overload Hunter, mindful of the upcoming season, and tried to optimize his recovery.

AP Ranch had him in cold tubs and saunas, and monitored his diet and sleep.

Travis Hunter focused his training on endurance and recovery. Greg Sholars

“He wakes up on [level] 10, he’s ready to go,” Sholars said. “It’s all about recovery. He obviously has amazing natural metabolism, so his body recovers at a rate that’s kind of unheard of, and that’s what allows him to do what he can do. So we were trying to develop and maintain that great cardiovascular endurance.”

The biggest concern for a football player logging as many snaps as Hunter is injury. He missed four games in 2022 at Jackson State with injury, so he hasn’t made it through a full college season yet.

Dr. Marcus Elliott, founder and director of Peak Performance Project and a former physiologist and injury prevention specialist for the New England Patriots when Bill Belichick arrived as coach, said Hunter’s exposure for injury, playing full-time cornerback and wide receiver, is “incredibly high.” Elliott noted how the Patriots had several two-way players early in Belichick’s tenure — wide receiver Troy Brown also played cornerback, linebacker Mike Vrabel moonlighted as a tight end, slot receiver Julian Edelman played briefly at cornerback — but none absorbed the play load that Hunter is taking on at wideout and cornerback for Colorado.

“Those are both positions where you can take some plays off, but you don’t always get to decide when you take those plays off,” Elliott said. “The guys just playing defense end up worn out after games, not just bruised but physically exhausted. Guys will drop 8-10 pounds (during a game), it’s not crazy to do that. Certainly 4-5 pounds is pretty routine. So it’s super demanding, just from an energy standpoint.”

Elliott stressed the recovery component, noting that certain athletes naturally have more glycogen and creatine phosphate, the energy source for short-term explosive exercise. Although Elliott hasn’t done labs with Hunter, he thinks Hunter excels not only because of his athleticism, but because of an exceptional energy substrate that allows him to bounce back.

What stands out is that most athletes who excel in recovery are not the most powerful or most explosive, Elliott said. In track terms, they’re the distance runners, not the sprinters.

“But he’s not playing those positions unless he’s a 100-meter guy,” Elliott said. “So it’s rare to have someone who also has those energy system components. You can only train them to their capacity, and they’re not crazy adaptable beyond that, so if he wasn’t born with some gifts on the energy system side, he’d be a liability.”

Nutrition is an increasingly important component for high-performing athletes like Hunter, who has had some challenges there. He doesn’t have a huge appetite, according to Colorado cornerbacks coach Kevin Mathis, and needs some prodding to eat breakfast every day and to consume enough protein, including late-night shakes.

Swick remembers Hunter being only about 150 pounds when he arrived at Collins Hill High. Hunter didn’t like eating the team’s pregame meals because of how his stomach felt afterward, so he opted for a packet of gummy bears.

“We had a coach whose job was to get him gummy bears before games,” Swick said.

The gummy bear plan probably won’t work as Hunter’s career progresses. Sebastian Zorn, head team performance dietician for the Los Angeles Rams, told ESPN that Hunter’s overall hydration and carbohydrate intake are especially important, given how much he exerts himself during a typical game.

Zorn doesn’t work with Hunter but estimates that Hunter burns about 4,500 calories per game, based on his play count. According to Zorn, Hunter should drink 32 ounces of Gatorade or Gatorade chews per every hour of a game, with the goal of adding 60-80 grams of carbs. Zorn also said Hunter would benefit from a recovery shake with protein and carbs immediately after games, even perhaps as he walks off the field.

“If he’s not matching that output, his weight will go down and the performance will suffer,” Zorn said. “There’s not many guys that do that really at the collegiate or this [NFL] level. The closest thing at this level is a starter who’s also doing the special teams work. Nutritionally, there’s always a way to figure it out, but I haven’t heard of an NFL player playing both ways.”

HUNTER SPEAKS CONFIDENTLY about how he plays, as if there could be no other way, even though no one else in major college football takes on the same workload. He believes “an eased mind” is vital, and perhaps why others can’t replicate his approach.

“They put the thing in their mind that they can’t do it,” he said. “You have to believe you can.”

Hunter also puts in the work, especially from a mental standpoint. He splits his time between Colorado’s cornerback and wide receiver groups for meetings and practices.

Buffaloes wide receivers coach Jason Phillips said the goal is a 50-50 split. Mathis thinks it’s more like a 70-30 edge to his room.

“I’m a selfish dude,” Mathis said, laughing. “I want him to know every little thing he can get. The guys [on defense] need to see him a lot more, too.”

Mathis’ deal with Hunter is that if he can dominate defensively, he will get more opportunities with the offense. If Hunter misses a meeting, he will come in after practice and watch film with the staff.

“As a coach, I was curious, like, what do you do? How are you able to do this?” Phillips said. “He’s either watching tape, studying film here, or he’s at home, studying tape, watching film. That’s what he does. He said, ‘Coach, I’m just comfortable with being boring, watching tape, just hanging out at home.’ He loves the game of football, so he doesn’t do a whole lot that would tax his body outside of football.”

Hunter was similar in high school. Swick remembers how he would break down the strengths and weaknesses of the other emerging stars he would face in 7-on-7 tournaments.

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When the Collins Hill coaches met to study film from Sunday through Thursday, Hunter was often right there with them.

“By the time he was a junior, he was a pro at it,” Swick said. “He would spend just as much time as an assistant coach would, four hours, five hours, six hours. He knew he wanted to be the greatest of all time and his ceiling was super high.”

Hunter said he trained two or three times per day in high school, pretty much every day of the week. He goes through Colorado’s standard training while adding “a little extra” afterward, while also incorporating more treatment and recovery to protect his body.

“You’ve got to be super disciplined,” he said. “Some days I wake up and I don’t want to do it, but I know I have a bigger purpose.”

The 6-foot-1, 185-pound Hunter rarely comes off of the field during Colorado’s practices, which is how he likes it. Mathis said Hunter logs “twice as many plays as everybody else,” working with both the first-team offense and first-team defense and only resting when the third-stringers are out there.

The hardest part for Colorado’s coaches and athletic trainers is monitoring Hunter’s reps and giving — or, in Hunter’s case, forcing — days off.

Sanders leans on his own playing experience to manage Hunter’s field time. In addition to cornerback duties, Sanders returned punts throughout his NFL career, and was the Atlanta Falcons’ primary kick returner during his first four years in the league. He had 60 career receptions, including 36 with the Dallas Cowboys in 1996, with three touchdowns. Sanders also played Major League Baseball for nine seasons, overlapping in football for all but one. In 1997, Sanders played 13 games with the Cowboys and 115 with the Cincinnati Reds.

Sanders told ESPN he’s amused when others offer opinions on how to manage Hunter, noting that he, more than anyone, understands the player’s workload. Hunter gets days off and his snaps are closely tracked.

“Like, I know when he’s tired for real, I know when he needs to come out of the game, I know when he loses focus,” Sanders said. “I know him like a book.”

THE USAGE PLAN for Hunter hasn’t changed going into his second season at Colorado, his third in college and, barring a major setback, his last in college. He will start at both cornerback and wide receiver for the Buffs, and also continue to have a role on special teams. Mathis wants Hunter on the field for “every play” on defense, and knows that the offense wants the same.

His goals for the season couldn’t be much higher.

“Heisman Trophy,” Hunter said, “and win a bowl game or get to the national championship.”

The belief for Hunter and within the Colorado program is that he can do everything asked of him in 2023, at an even better level. Although Hunter’s presence showed in every game last fall, he, like all cornerbacks, had some tough moments, including being beaten by Stanford’s Elic Ayomanor for touchdowns during the Cardinal’s comeback win in Boulder.

Colorado is replacing top receiver Xavier Weaver, so Hunter, along with Jimmy Horn Jr., Vanderbilt transfer Will Sheppard and others, will need to fill the production void.

Hunter can lean on his coach’s experience playing two pro sports for insight on his physical workload. Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports

“It’s not just one side of the ball, but he wants to be a complete football player,” Phillips said. “That’s a rare trait these days.”

Since 2018, only 32 players have logged more than 1,100 snaps in a season, and none has reached 1,200. If Hunter maintains his pace from last fall and appears in every game, he would have more than 1,300 in the regular season alone.

“He has the ability to do it,” Mathis said. “He’s a guy that has to be challenged. He gets bored when he accomplishes things.”

Hunter has full support at Colorado, including from a head coach who as a player pushed the boundaries of what athletes can achieve. But will the NFL be as open to a two-way player? What’s certain is he will be one of the most intriguing high-level draft prospects ever.

Not surprisingly, Hunter projects as a first-round draft pick. ESPN’s Field Yates lists him at No. 11 in his recent mock draft, while ESPN’s Matt Miller and Jordan Reid both list Hunter among their top three cornerbacks and wide receivers for the draft.

“If someone’s smart, they would start him on one side of the ball and have a package on the other side, whatever the team needs,” Sanders said. “But to me, he’s the No. 1 as a corner and the No. 1 guy as a receiver. I don’t see anybody else in college football better.”

Elliott thinks it’s “pretty unlikely” an NFL team would want Hunter to play full-time both ways. The game is increasingly specialized, which has made players better at their assigned positions. There’s also more stress on defensive backs, Elliott said, because they must respond to the opponent’s movement and can’t have any deficiencies with straight-line speed, deceleration, cutting or agility. Wide receivers can overcome shortfalls with a singular “superpower.”

For that reason, Elliott expects Hunter to primarily play cornerback rather than both spots.

“As someone who loves sport, it’d be amazing,” Elliott said. “I love it when guys break molds. I would love to see it. In this day and age, to have somebody go both ways would be incredible. I’d be all over that. If that came to fruition, I’d be glad to dive into that with two feet, understand this kid, and try to get him in a lab and really take it apart.”

Sholars has trained top athletes, like NBA players Myles Turner and Ron Holland, and NFL linebacker Malik Jefferson. Early in his career, he served as Florida’s coordinator of speed and conditioning for coach Steve Spurrier’s first few Gators teams, including the 1991 SEC championship squad.

Yet he hasn’t worked with someone quite like Hunter.

“I said this to him: ‘We can’t allow rules to define the undefinable,'” Sholars said. “The workouts say that this is what it should be, history says that this is what it should be. But then every now and then, you run across somebody who just redefines things.

“He’s a kid who has that thing about him that could redefine things.”