Travis Hunter and Ashton Jeanty dominate in Black Friday Heisman Trophy showdown

The final week of the College Football regular season is all about the race for the 12-team College Football Playoff, but amidst that chaos, which is spread across the three-day Thanksgiving weekend, there was another race to monitor, and that one only took a few hours a split-screen TV to consume. 

Black Friday is typically for buying presents for next month, but this year, Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty and Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter gave college football an unforgettable gift. The 2024 Heisman Trophy race is the most unique one in years, and it essentially all culminated on Friday with early morning kickoffs in Boise and Boulder and two remarkable performances going head-to-head in the same time slot. 

With no quarterbacks ascending into the Heisman conversation, Hunter entered the week as the favorite, though not a prohibitive one, and the wide receivers/cornerback left the door open at all, Jeanty did everything he could to run right through it. 

No. 11 Boise State closed its season at home with a 10:00 a.m. local, Noon ET kickoff against Oregon State, and the Bronco’s star running back put on a show for fans who put enough Bailey’s and Kahlua in their coffee to find their seats on time. He carried the ball eight times on Boise State’s 14-play 81-yard touchdown drive to open the game and capped off his historic regular season with a 226-yard one-touchdown performance on 37 carries in a 34-18 win.

Boise State is poised for the Mountain West Championship Game next week, but Jeanty finishes the regular season with 2,228 rushing yards, 2,390 scrimmage yards, 28 rushing touchdowns, and 29 total trips to the end zone. 

At the same time in Boulder, Hunter made his mark just three plays into No. 25 Colorado’s home regular-season finale against Oklahoma State with an interception of Maealiuaki Smith. The pick, his fourth of the season, set up Colorado’s first of seven touchdowns in a 52-0 win. 

When defensive players find their way into the offensive playbook, it’s typically for a package of gimmicky looks, but Hunter plays both ways full-time. With 10 catches for 116 yards and three touchdowns, the win marked his third game this year with at least 10 catches and a defensive interception. That’s not just a remarkable stat, but a borderline impossible one to accomplish in a quarter of your team’s games. 

On Friday, it was almost as if while Jeanty was ripping off a physical run through Oregon State’s defense, he was watching a live feed from Boulder as Hunter seemingly made another ridiculous grap over two defenders. And the same for Hunter the other way. 

There’s such a thing as scoreboard watching, and Colorado will need to do quite a bit of it this weekend as Deion Sanders’ Buffaloes hope to secure a spot in the Big 12 title game and keep their CFP hopes alive, but “awardboard” watching is a bit more rare. Still, if a report surfaced tonight saying that Colorado had GA in the locker room with eyes on the Boise State game or that one of Spencer Danielson’s assistants had the Colorado game pulled up on his phone, it wouldn’t be a shock. 

The two leading Heisman candidates answered each other each other’s brilliance all game long. It made for must-see TV with relatively lopsided final scores and the best possible advertisement for YouTube TV’s multi-view feature. 

There is still another week before Heisman Trophy votes are due, and if Colorado sneaks into the Big 12 title game, another opportunity for both players to make their final arguments, but if this was the closing chapter of the 2024 Heisman Trophy race, it was a perfect ending.