Colorado’s Travis Hunter was the Heisman Trophy favorite going into Saturday night’s trophy presentation, and he ended up adding to his impressive trophy collection for the season by winning the award.
It was not quite a runaway victory for him.
Hunter collected 552 first-place votes and 2,231 points in the voting, narrowly edging out Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty‘s 2,017 total points.
Jeanty also had 309 first-place votes.
That was not only a small margin of victory for Hunter, it was the closest Heisman Trophy vote in 15 years when Alabama running back Mark Ingram narrowly beat Stanford’s Toby Gerhart.
Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel came in third in this year’s voting with 24 first-place votes and 516 total points.
Miami’s Cam Ward came in fourth with six first-place votes and 229 total points.
Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo, who was not invited to the trophy presentation ceremony in New York City, came in fifth place with three first-place votes and 170 total points.
Jeanty was the one player that figured to be the biggest competition for Hunter given his absolutely massive rushing numbers. He finished the regular season with 2,497 yards on 344 carries with 29 rushing touchdowns. He also added another 116 yards on 20 catches with a receiving touchdown.
He enters the playoffs just 131 yards away from Barry Sanders’ single-season rushing record. Jeanty will have at least one more game to beat it, and potentially more if Boise State keeps winning in the College Football Playoff.
Boise State has a bye into the quarterfinals and will play the winner of the Penn State-SMU game in two weeks. Colorado will play BYU in the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 28. Hunter has not yet announced if he will play in that game.
