Travis Hunter said the choice that sent him to Colorado was not as automatic as it looked from the outside. On October 28, he described the Travis Hunter Deion Sanders transfer process as “kind of weird” and said he did “a little exploring” before following Deion Sanders to the Colorado Buffaloes.
That admission matters because Hunter was not just any transfer. He had been the No. 1 recruit in the 2022 class, and plenty of people assumed he would go wherever Sanders went. Hunter said the expectation was so strong that even checking out other options felt, in his words, a little disrespectful, which is why this interview drew attention now.
The path to that point had already been unusual. Hunter was initially committed to Florida State, then flipped to Jackson State University on Signing Day in December 2021, becoming the first five-star recruit to choose an HBCU or FCS program over an FBS school. At Jackson State, he played wide receiver and cornerback, and the numbers backed up the idea that he could handle both sides: 20 tackles and two interceptions.
What Hunter wanted most was not money. He said he wanted to know whether he could play both sides of the ball, and that was the only question he had for Sanders. Sanders granted that wish, first at Jackson State and later at Colorado, which is why Hunter’s move was about fit as much as loyalty. When Sanders was named the new head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes in December 2022, the football world assumed Hunter would follow, and he eventually did.
The one thing Hunter’s comments do not settle is which other options, if any, were truly in play before Colorado became the answer. He said he did some exploring, but he did not name the schools or outline how far that went. What is clear is that the decision was still his to make, even in a transfer story that had Coach Prime’s shadow over every step.
