Travis Hunter earned this moment. What happens next is up to him – Andscape
2025-04-23T20:01:35Z
Travis Hunter, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner whose two-way ballhawk skills make him one of the most unique draft prospects in NFL history, likely wasn’t li…
Travis Hunter, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner whose two-way ballhawk skills make him one of the most unique draft prospects in NFL history, likely wasn’t listening to Jay-Z in the fall of 2009. He was, after all, only six-years-old at the time. Yet, as the adage goes, “There’s a Jay-Z lyric for every situation in life.” Unbeknownst to young Travis at the time, Jay dropped a bar nearly 16 years ago that would define his life at this exact moment.
“And as for the critics/Tell me I don’t get it,” Jay rapped on “Already Home,” “Everybody can tell you how to do it/ They never did it.”
Everyone has an opinion about Travis Hunter. Those views have only grown louder in the hours leading up to this week’s NFL draft, where he’s expected to be a top-five pick. Opinions about all parts of his life permeate the culture. What position will he play? Can his body hold up? Why is he engaged already? Will superstar-streamer Kai Cenat actually get tickets to every game? Can playing two ways complicate a contract negotiation? Is he the NFL’s version of Shohei Ohtani? (Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry called Hunter a “unicorn” and “Ohtani” in the same breath last week.) Hunter took to Instagram Monday to answer any speculation, describing himself as “GENERATIONAL.”
“I think people forget this didn’t happen overnight,” Hunter told Andscape. “I’ve been working, playing both sides of the ball for as long as I can remember. This isn’t just a game to me. It’s my life. Football is everything to me, and I do it for my family as the oldest to show younger siblings the way.”
But the question of how he’s handling such a transition beyond the obvious begs to be asked. The NFL draft is an annual tradition, one that feeds into society’s insatiable thirst for anything football-related. From the first round to the last pick, every young man drafted represents a different story but has one hope in mind: to change the course of their lives and their family’s future. That’s no different for Hunter, though he couldn’t be any more different than the other young men who’ll hear their names called.
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“It’ll be important that he has a game plan for his personal life, meaning with his significant other, family and friends. And then his professional life regarding teammates, coaches, marketing people and agents,” said Louis Riddick, ESPN NFL analyst and former teammate of Deion Sanders with the Atlanta Falcons. “He’s gonna have to have a plan for all of it because this cat is going to be under hot, bright lights all the time. And it’ll be easy to melt down, fold up, and start doing s— that’s out of character. It’s easy.”
Hunter is the only prospect in this draft — perhaps any draft — with a remote chance of becoming offensive and defensive Rookie of the Year. Since 2006, when tracking snaps first began, no NFL player has logged more than 400 offensive and 400 defensive snaps. Last year, Hunter took 713 snaps on offense and 748 on defense. In no uncertain terms, Travis Hunter was one of the best players on either side of the ball whenever No. 12 was on the field. More importantly, last week, ESPN’s Mina Kimes labeled Hunter “the best corner and best receiver” in the draft.
Though he plays like one, Hunter isn’t a machine. Lost in the avalanche of mock drafts and never-ending conversations that come with being a public figure in 2025 is the humanity of it all. He’s simply a 21-year-old grappling with a wickedly rapid transformation that would send most young people — most anyone, really — into a panic attack.
“From my experience, everyone seems to think that because they’re an elite athlete — an NFL player, an Olympic athlete — they don’t have any problems. Like they have everything under control,” said renowned sports psychologist Robert Andrews. The founder and director of The Institute of Sports Performance has been sought by and worked closely with athletes like Laurie Hernandez and Simone Biles. “That just couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Hunter is hoping his flavor of talent, which the NFL has rarely seen, will help build his empire. Talent alone, though, is never enough. Sustainability comes from the foundation. That’s where the real Travis Hunter story lives.
Former Colorado Buffaloes player Travis Hunter (right) during a ceremony where his jersey number was retired before the Black and Gold Spring Game at Folsom Field on April 19 in Boulder, Colorado. Dustin Bradford/Getty Images for ONIT
No matter the level, football coaches like to believe nothing shocks them. Composure is key in a game that requires a balance of focus and intensity like no other walk of life. Hunter has been a composure-breaker his entire life. His younger years were spent roughly an hour north of Miami in Boynton Beach, Florida. There were rough times, but there were core memories that molded Hunter, too.
Though he was the smallest of his cousins back then, playing football at his grandmother’s house molded him. There was trash talk, sure, but that’s where his confidence came from. There were tears, cuts, and scraped knees, but that’s where his toughness came from. There were big games and significant moments in Hunter’s future, but if he could prove his moxie under the watchful eye of Shirley Hunter, aka “Miss B,” then every other platform paled in comparison. When grandma noticed her grandson throwing spirals with both hands during his little league days with the Boynton Beach Bulldogs, she understood what the world would later.
“I said … ‘That’s the one. That’s the one,’” Grandma Hunter told The Palm Beach Post, recalling a decades-old conversation with Bill Tome (Bulldogs founder). “I said it just like that.”
Years later, Ferrante Edmonds, Hunter’s mother, moved the family to Georgia with her husband and four kids. Around the same time, Hunter enrolled at Collins Hill High School. Lenny Gregory coached Hunter at Collins and was part of the village that protected and molded him. But when you ask Gregory about the first time he met the future Heisman winner, the experience is one he’ll tell for the rest of his life.
Gregory received word that a rising ninth grader who had the potential to be “really special” was coming. This mythical kid hadn’t attended any workouts. No matter how talented he was, Gregory thought, there was no way he could waltz onto a field without missing several beats. The day Hunter arrived, he did so with his mother and siblings. They knew what was about to happen. Witnessing everyone else’s faces when Travis Hunter went full Travis Hunter was the entertainment they came for.
“I was kinda messing with Travis and asked him, ‘Are you a dog? Can you play?’” Gregory chuckled. “He just looked at me and rolled his eyes. Like, ‘What are you talking about? You don’t even know. I’m a dude.’”
The confidence, while charming, still didn’t convince Gregory. It’s not shocking that a teenager would have ultimate belief in himself, but again, Gregory hadn’t seen what “the tiny, little freshman” could do. Gregory asked if Hunter was in shape. Hunter said passing the conditioning tests would be a breeze.
“Sure enough, he gets out there and runs with all the varsity defensive backs. Every year I was [there], seven to 10 Division I players would be at [Collins Hill],” Gregory told Andscape. “I’m thinking this dude will end up throwing up in a trash can. You can’t run that hard on the first [try] because a lot of guys have been doing it all summer. They pace themselves, and he runs it like a 200-yard dash. He runs it in like 26 seconds.”
This happened more than once. There was vomit in trash cans. None of it was from Hunter, however. Gregory was awestruck.
“I’m like, this guy’s not normal. My mind was saying, ‘Only if this kid was bigger.’ I’m thinking he’s gonna play ninth grade,” Gregory, who became head coach at Commerce High School in January, continued. “He ends up being the starting corner[back] and [wide] receiver for me.”
In 2021, with Hunter as the team’s best player, Collins won the Class 7A state championship in Georgia. Off the field, his legend continued to grow. The entire Collins Hill community wrapped its arms around him, from team chaplains to school administrators. Hunter’s mother worked at Publix, and her son lived with one of the team’s assistant coaches for over a year. Much of Hunter’s time was spent helping kids — he was already a big brother, and kids gravitated toward him. Even as a teenager, Hunter understood the importance of a smile and what it could do for others who came in contact with him. In February, the Muhammad Ali Center named Hunter its inaugural Emerging G.O.A.T. recipient, celebrating dominance in the sport and a dedication to humanitarian work.
“He was just a good human being, man. Have you ever been around somebody where you want to do good things for them because they’re such a good person?” Gregory said. “That’s Travis.”
Hunter gave the football universe and the general public a glimpse of his “march-to-the-beat-of-my-own-drum” mentality when the No. 1 player in the country chose the historically Black university Jackson State University over Florida State. The move sent shockwaves through college football. CBS Sports called it an “all-time stunner.” 247Sports’ director of national recruiting, Steve Wiltfong, said the decision was the most significant signing “in the history of college football.”
Happiness, for Hunter, wasn’t based on outside expectations. It was based on the lifelong journey of fulfilling his own mission. Though Hunter would eventually transfer to the University of Colorado where his legend would go mainstream, the decision to attend Jackson State is partly why his mindset remains balanced as a young Black man with the world in the palm of his hands, but with the weight of the universe on his shoulders.
“[Jackson State was] probably one of the best times of my life because as I was playing football, I was growing as a person,” Hunter said in March. “We enjoyed being at an HBCU. We enjoyed being inside of our own skin.”
His last season as a Colorado Buffalo saw him finish second in the country in receiving touchdowns (15) and north of 1,200 receiving yards — he also held quarterbacks to a paltry 22 quarterback rating. Hunter is a unicorn amongst unicorns in a sport that has seen two-way superstars like Champ Bailey, fellow Heisman winner Charles Woodson and even his college coach, Deion Sanders. All three, like Hunter, were collegiate supernovas. All three, which Hunter hopes to become, are NFL Hall of Famers. But none of those three were as prolific on both sides of the ball as Hunter. He followed a blueprint and created his own.
“He’s so rare because you rarely see a player dominate on both sides of the ball,” said ESPN NFL Draft analyst Jordan Reid. “What I love most is that you have to be so special of a player in order to be that just because you have to be in tune with two game plans. That requires an almost supernatural level of focus. Just let him play both and let his development take care of itself and figure it out from there.”
Travis Hunter, the University of Colorado cornerback/wide receiver, during the Heisman Trophy press conference at the Marriott Marquis on Dec. 14, 2024 in New York. Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Growing up around Sanders means Prime Time will naturally rub off on anyone. But Hunter has had just as much of an impact on Coach Prime, playfully calling himself Sanders’ “favorite” son in the past. “Stealing” the sneakers LeBron James sent Sanders became hilarious banter on social media. As with his mother, Hunter’s relationship with his biological father and Florida high school football legend and track star Travis Hunter Sr. runs deep, as evident in his Heisman speech (and his father’s emotional reaction). Concurrently, though, his relationship with Sanders holds extreme personal deference.
“My dad, all the stuff he went through, man. I want to show him what his oldest son is doing, and I’m doing it for him and my entire family. My mom has always been that rock. She never let me quit on myself and sacrificed moving us from Florida to Georgia,” Hunter said. “[But Coach Prime] changed my life in more ways than people know or I can ever describe.”
“I know for a fact, having talked to Deion as many times as I have, there’s no doubt that the message he gives all those young men — in particular Travis [and his sons] Shilo and Shedeur — is to be unapologetically yourself. Especially if what you’re doing is not hurting anybody,” said Riddick. “He’s gonna make you feel you can be larger than life, too. He’s gonna make you feel that if you had doubts about who you thought you could become, he will wipe those away.”
It might be fair to say Hunter is an extroverted introvert. An acronym floats around him: “FFF&G,” short for the loves in his life: Family, Football, Fishing and Gaming. Hunter’s world is changing so quickly and in such a short amount of time it’s almost dizzying to keep up with. Countless partnerships and ads surrounding Hunter’s rare marketability have rivaled the conversations around him recently. He’s worked with Panini, Snickers, Adidas and has a DICK’s Sporting Goods commercial alongside Olympic gymnast Suni Lee, Kevin Durant, YouTube influencer iShowSpeed and Tom Brady.
Countless partnerships and ads, including Snickers, surround Travis Hunter’s rare marketability. Snickers
“The first time I remember collecting a card that excited me was a Bo Jackson card. … Now, Bo played two sports: football and baseball. But I feel like Travis has that crossover because of the ability to play both sides of the football,” said Jason Howarth, Panini Senior Vice President of Marketing and Athlete Relations. “If I fast forward five years from now, and Travis Hunter’s going to be who starts their collecting future, [that’s success].”
Therein lies the crux of this transition for Hunter. It’s not a matter of whether he’s ready for the moment, that is, the NFL and everything its massive universe has to offer, good, bad, or indifferent. It’s about the infrastructure for him to succeed on and off the field. That’s a team effort.
“That’s a question teams asked me, ‘Hey, how is he going to be able to play both sides, learn the playbook on both sides at the NFL level?’ Well, he was an academic All-American at Colorado playing both sides,” said Adie von Gontard, Hunter’s agent and founder and CEO of Young Money APAA Sports. “This is something that’s not spoken about, but you have to be so dang smart in all aspects of life to be an academic All-American. He’s the third Heisman winner ever to be an academic All-American.”
“The playbook becomes the schoolwork, so he can study two playbooks versus one side of the ball because he doesn’t have to keep up at 4.0 anymore,” said Constance Schwartz-Morini, CEO and co-founder of SMAC Entertainment, who’ll help manage Hunter’s off-field endeavors. Schwartz-Morini completed Deion Sanders’ recent $54M extension, making him one of the country’s highest-paid coaches. She’s known Hunter since he committed to Jackson State and sees him as the son she never had.
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“Now he has to have a 4.0 on his playbooks,” she said.
The most challenging question to answer in many cases is how to save a person from themselves when all they crave is joy. Hunter’s perfect day involves working out, film study and fishing. If the fish are biting, even better. Hunter is already adept at blocking out noise. If he was fazed by it, when conversations swirled around him and his fiancée, Leanna Lenne, and the long-term stability of their relationship last year, Hunter never revealed his hand.
But at some point, the NFL’s echo chamber will introduce itself. The game is the game, and not even someone like Hunter can avoid the uncomfortable conversations that come with it. Regarding the next phase of his life, Hunter and his now-former coach have had no shortage of discussions.
“Surround myself with the right people in my life to help me build that empire,” Hunter said of Sanders’ most important lessons. “Don’t trust just anyone.”
Keeping track of who Hunter is is perhaps the most crucial task in what will soon be Travis Hunter’s NFL career because it’s a process that began long before hearing his name called Thursday night. Like most other multi-billion dollar industries in America, football devours talent and recruits new talent at a clip best described as unapologetic and blinding.
“A lot of people want to drain you, not pour into you,” said Riddick. “It’s super important that he has a close circle of advisors, friends and family who don’t want anything but to see [him] succeed. It’s hard to find. Well, let’s say you haven’t found them at this point; it’s hard to find them. You want people in it because they give a f— about Travis Hunter. Everyone says, ‘It won’t change me, money, fame. It ain’t going to change me.’ It changes everybody to some degree. It’s just a matter of what your game plan is to handle it.”
Talk to anyone who knows Hunter; they’ll describe the child-like exuberance that envelops him. And it’s that lust for life that’s worth fiercely protecting. Each person in his universe has to be in step with the other.
It’s the only way a mustard seed transforms into a well-oiled machine, acknowledges Schwartz-Morini.
“This also comes down to the fact that when you have a client like him, as well as his fiancé who is super involved, everyone is just on the same goal,” she said, envisioning all the chess board pieces in her head. “And that’s for him to win — on and off the field.”
Andrews has never spoken to Hunter, though he is mesmerized by his mental fortitude to play a physical game at such an unprecedented level. He saw many similar characteristics in Simone Biles, widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time but someone vocal in her mental health journey.
Andrews, if he ever spoke to Hunter, would do so with his own humanity in mind. To achieve his idea of success and, more importantly, protect his peace, the castle can’t be compromised. In Andrews’ experience, athletes understand the concept and the reality of making tough, sometimes brutal, decisions regarding the energy to keep around them in such public, forward-facing professions.
“I’ll tell them, ‘Your drawbridge is down, the gate’s up, and people are running all over your castle in rooms they don’t need to even be in,’” Andrews said of his approach. “They decide when it goes down, who comes into the castle, which rooms they get to go to, and for how long. So they have to learn if they don’t have it, they have to have to develop life skills.”
The entire world will soon witness Travis Hunter’s world change. He understands the weight of the responsibility in front of him. Depending on the perspective, responsibility can be a burden or a blessing. Hunter chooses the latter. It’s already changed his and his family’s lives. As he prepares to embark on a professional odyssey that’s as unique as a fingerprint, if he could ask life one question about his future and receive an honest answer, he wouldn’t.
“I’d just say thank you,” Hunter said. “Keep throwing at me what you want, and I’ll keep attacking it with all I got.”
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