Travis Hunter's rise to college football immortality

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- There are massive concrete barriers blocking what were once entrances to the Metro Extended Stay hotel. The empty and cracked parking lot has patches of overgrown weeds sprouting from the asphalt, and the ditches surrounding the property are covered in overgrown brush and littered with trash.

The hotel is gone, but a single black mailbox still stands on the large lot not far from Georgia Route 316, a lone, somber reminder of the three-story building that once housed numerous families and residents.

In high school, University of Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter lived at the hotel with his mother, stepfather and three siblings in a single room. There were two beds, a bathroom and little privacy for schoolwork or anything else.

Hunter's coaches at nearby Collins Hill High weren't aware of his circumstances when he showed up unannounced during the summer before his freshman year in 2018. They only knew that Hunter, who had moved to the Atlanta suburb with his family from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was different.

"His dad said he was a day one starter on varsity," said Collins Hill High coach Drew Swick, who was the team's outside linebackers coach when Hunter enrolled. "We all kind of chuckled and laughed. We hear that all the time.

"When we saw him for the first time in practice, we're like, 'Damn, he isn't lying. This kid is legit.'"

Hunter has been different from nearly everyone else at each stop of his football career. It's why the 21-year-old receiver and cornerback -- a rare two-way player -- is a massive betting favorite to win the Heisman Trophy on Saturday (-2250 on ESPN BET) and might be a top-five pick in next year's NFL draft.

Hunter said winning the Heisman Trophy was his dream as a kid, but the idea of hoisting the stiff-armed trophy as the best college football player in the land seemed attainable only in video games. Hunter played EA Sports NCAA Football with his cousin, filling his roster with players with 99 grades and "trying to make them win the Heisman and all the good trophies," he said. Now Hunter is tied for the highest rating in the current version of the game.

"I never envisioned this would happen for me, but I'm so happy to be sitting right here," Hunter said in a news conference last month.

Hunter's path to the Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York was anything but orthodox. After becoming one of the country's most coveted recruits at Collins Hill, he shunned college football blue bloods Alabama, Florida State, Georgia and others to sign with Jackson State, becoming the first five-star recruit to choose an HBCU program.

After one season with the Tigers, Hunter followed his coach, Deion Sanders, to Colorado, where he became one of the sport's most electrifying players.

This season, Hunter has 92 receptions for 1,152 yards with 14 touchdowns (No. 2 in the FBS) on offense, while allowing just 22 catches, one touchdown and six first downs on defense. He logged 1,356 snaps on offense and defense in 12 games -- 434 more than any other FBS player.

It's a workload that would leave most players gasping for air. "There hasn't been a game this year or last year where I felt like I'm too tired, I need to take a break, or I'm taking two minutes now to cool out," Hunter said. "I don't ever feel that way."

With his blazing speed and playmaking ability as a receiver and lockdown cover skills as a cornerback, Hunter is considered a generational talent who wants to play on both sides of the ball in the NFL.

"I'm super confident, and I believe that I can do it at the next level," Hunter said. "I'm not going to let anyone tell me that I can't do something that I already done. They said I couldn't do it in college, and I ended up doing it in college.

"A lot of people tell me I can't do it in the NFL, but I'm going to still do it in the NFL. You know, a lot of people just let other people get in their ear, so they don't let them do it, and some people don't have the body type to be able to go both ways full-time."

When Hunter was asked about being described as a unicorn by a reporter, he said, "A unicorn is just different, different from everybody else. It's just hard to do what the unicorn can do."

SHIRLEY HUNTER, HIS paternal grandmother, who lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, isn't surprised by her grandson's success. She would tell anyone who would listen that "he was going to be the one" when he was 4 years old. She remembers Hunter throwing a football with both hands when he was 5; he says he can throw one 70 yards now.

"Everything about him was different," said Shirley Hunter, who will be in New York to watch the Heisman Trophy ceremony. "His demeanor was different. When he was playing little league football and they'd take him off the field, he'd get upset. He wasn't like the other kids. He wanted to play all the time."

Hunter didn't start on the Collins Hill varsity team as a freshman, but he played quite a bit in the secondary. As a sophomore, he had seven interceptions and 49 catches for 919 yards with 12 touchdowns.

The next season, Hunter exploded as a star player on both sides of the ball, finishing with eight interceptions and 51 tackles on defense and a whopping 137 catches for 1,746 yards with 24 scores on offense. He helped lead the Eagles to the 2020 Class 7A state title game.

By then, Hunter was living with Collins Hill secondary coach Frontia Fountain and his wife and daughter, Mitoya and Peyton. One weekend while Hunter's mother was out of town, he asked Fountain if he could stay with him. Hunter lived in the Fountains' home for more than a year until shortly before leaving for college.

Hunter's mother, Ferrante Harris, told ESPN that she left behind a three-bedroom house in Florida in hopes of obtaining a better life for herself and her family when they moved to Georgia. For a while, they slept on the floor of a friend's house before moving to the hotel.

"In order for you to have something, you got to actually see it," Harris said. "So I knew that this was just us passing through, and that was something that we had to go through. We went through it. We endured it, but it also made us stronger. Not just one of us, but all of us. Sometimes the tests and the trials that you go through can make you stronger, make you wiser, and make you that much hungrier."

Fountain, who played cornerback at Savannah State, had two rules in his house: Hunter had to wake himself up for school, and he had to finish his homework before playing video games or going fishing.

There was one drawback while living with Fountain: He was one of the first employees to arrive at Collins Hill, at around 5:20 a.m. each school day. Hunter curled up in a blanket in Fountain's office until classes started at 7:20 a.m. He kicked off school days by hugging the administrative assistant and secretary in the front office.

"He was not only special on the football field, he was a special kid," Fountain said. "Travis never had any discipline [problems]. He was never in trouble. The worst thing he did was watching film in class."

Hunter could be seen walking the halls at Collins Hill with a stuffed wolf draped over his shoulders to stay warm. His diet in high school included hot (and extra wet) chicken wings, Chipotle and tons of candy. He skipped pregame meals and consumed a bag of gummy bears instead.

"The personality that you see, from the celebration dances to the onesies on his social media, I can't think of him and not smile," said Heather Childs, an assistant principal at Collins Hill. "Because to be around him, it was just joy."

AFTER HUNTER INITIALLY committed to play football at Florida State in March 2020, the Seminoles asked him to graduate from high school a semester early.

Childs took on the task of helping Hunter try to do it. As a junior, Hunter took a block course, completing an entire year of language arts in one semester. He enrolled in summer school courses before his senior year, and then tackled block classes in math, science and language arts and three extra online courses that fall. Childs helped Hunter with study strategies and pacing plans.

"He worked at home," Fountain said. "He'd come home, get a snack, and then he would sit there and work on his homework. He knew what it was going to take, and Travis is a very smart kid. He needed structure."

As a senior, Hunter missed five games because of an ankle injury. He returned in time for the state playoffs, helping Collins Hill win its first state title with a 24-8 victory against Milton High in December 2021. Hunter had 10 catches for 153 yards and one touchdown and forced a fumble on defense. He tied a state record with 46 career touchdown receptions.

Before the early signing period opened that month, Hunter quietly took an official visit to the Jackson State campus in Mississippi. Tigers quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the head coach's son, had been urging him to come, and they hooked up for brunch during his visit.

"He was trying to make a TikTok," Sanders said last month. "I said, 'Bro, if I make the TikTok, you got to commit, man.'"

One assistant coach whose Power 5 team was involved in Hunter's recruitment until the end remembered walking out of his final visit at Collins Hill and calling his head coach.

"This kid is going to Jackson State," the assistant told the coach.

"No f---ing way," the coach responded.

"He talked about Deion Sanders the entire time," the assistant said. "He knew everything about him. We're wasting our time."

On Dec. 15, 2021, Hunter flipped his commitment from Florida State to Jackson State. Swick didn't know where his star player was going to go until Hunter walked into his signing ceremony wearing Nike Air Force shoes that were navy blue, one of the Tigers' team colors.

"He was trying to kill two birds with one stone," Swick said. "He wanted to make HBCUs popular ... [and] Deion Sanders, the greatest to ever play his position, was going to be his head coach."

During his stunning announcement, Hunter thanked Fountain for believing in him.

"Since day one, Coach Fountain, you have seen something in me that no one else has seen," Hunter said. "Always coming to pick me up and making sure that I had something to eat and a place to stay every night. When I first got up here, we didn't really have any friends. I came up here and it was just football, and I thank my teachers for challenging me and helping me get my grades up."

Fountain and Childs traveled to Miami Gardens, Florida, with their families to watch Hunter play in his first college game, a 59-3 victory against Florida A&M in the Orange Blossom Classic on Sept. 5, 2022. Childs attended a game at Colorado, and Fountain watches his former student play on TV every week.

They're especially proud that he was named an Academic All-American last year with a 3.7 grade-point average.

"When you have a child, it takes a village to help with that child," Harris said. "It doesn't just be the parent. It also takes other people that can reach your child just as well as you can. In some areas that you won't be able to reach your child, there is always someone that God will play in that child's life or your life, they'll be able to reach that child for you. So they did exactly what I was not qualified to do. We all have different roles, and the roles they played with my son were amazing."

Earlier this year, Hunter donated $10,000 from an NIL deal with Cheez-It to Collins Hill High to help teachers purchase supplies for their classrooms.

In July 2021, the Lawrenceville City Council unanimously agreed to purchase the Metro Extended Stay hotel for $7.2 million. It had become a crime-ridden property, and Mayor David Still told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that purchasing the hotel would save taxpayers money in the long run. The city demolished the hotel in 2022.

In March, Hunter and his fiancée, Leanna Lenee, surprised his mother with a five-bedroom home outside Savannah, Georgia, purchased with money he earned from lucrative NIL deals with United Airlines and NerdWallet, among others. He revealed the surprise in a video on his YouTube channel.

"We went through our tests and our trials for a purpose," Harris said. "The purpose was this merry moment. Had we not gone through what we went through, how strong would he actually be? When people come at him and say crazy stuff, it doesn't matter, because he's been through a lot of storms. We've been through a lot of storms, but the outcome is so much greater than the storm that we were in."