FORT COLLINS — Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi struck the wrong pose.
If the Rocky Mountain Showdown was the spark that lit Travis Hunter’s 2024 Heisman Trophy march, BFN struck a match with one little gesture. Down 14-3, Fowler-Nicolosi, the CSU Rams’ sophomore quarterback, rolled right and bumped Hunter on the sideline as the pair tumbled of bounds.
Words were exchanged. But the kicker was when the Rams signal-caller leaned in and gave Hunter a “too small” taunt. The same one Patrick Beverley gave to LeBron James last year.
Two problems. One, BFN isn’t anywhere near as good a quarterback — yet — as Beverley is a trash-talker. Second, Hunter might be to college football right now what Old Man Bron is to hoops peers: A generational talent. The king.
“How stupid is that? This is Travis Hunter,” CU Buffs coach Deion Sanders said of his two-way star, who caught 13 passes for 100 yards and snatched an interception on defense in a 28-9 rout of the Rams at Canvas Stadium. “Dude, this is Travis Hunter. This is Travis Hunter. Like, who does that? I wouldn’t allow my kids to do that. And y’all know that.”
They should know better. BFN should know better, After their little convo, Hunter, who played 123 snaps in the Rocky Mountain Showdown, caught four balls for 31 yards and two touchdowns — and that was just on offense. On defense, No. 12 gobbled up an interception off Fowler-Nicolosi and an all-time unsportsmanlike penalty for celebrating that pick with his teammates.
Hunter picked BFN off with 18 seconds left in the third quarter and ran it right back up the right boundary. After the play was over, the 2025 NFL first-round draft pick partied at the CSU 10, with Hunter spinning the ball like a top while a group of CU defenders appeared to stretch their arms out as if being warmed by a pigskin fire. Flags flew, but the point was made.
The Buffs (2-1) weren’t just here to win.
They were here to make a statement.
Especially coming off the heels of a humbling 28-10 loss at Nebraska the weekend prior.
“(There’s) a little bit of extra motivation when the opponent is talking crazy,” Buffs QB Shedeur Sanders said after throwing for four scores. “We don’t really put other players down. We’re not trying to go on social media and do that. So yeah, they just asked for it.”
Like Lincoln a week ago, Fort Fun brought the noise and the heat early. But unlike Nebraska, the Rams couldn’t ride that momentum to knock the Buffs out of the game early.
CU, meanwhile, appeared to find answers to questions raised by that Big Red rout. They found a feature back in true freshman Micah Welch (nine carries), who rambled for 65 of the team’s 109 yards on thenight. They found an offensive line tweak with legs by moving Tyler Brown to left guard and inserting Phillip Houston as starting right tackle.
Out of a multitude of CSU sins, the cardinal one was letting CU hang around. They let Shedeur Sanders get comfortable in the pocket. They let Hunter and LaJohntay Wester (80 receiving yards, two TDs) get comfortable between the hash marks. They let the Buffs get comfortable enough to find a foothold.
And once they did, the Rams were in trouble.
The Cornhuskers had scored a touchdown the first time they had the ball, a touchdown the fourth time they had the ball, and fired off a quick pick-6 in between to forge a 21-0 cushion by midway through the second quarter.
Midway through the second stanza on Saturday, CSU had managed a field goal and 61 yards of total offense. Three points and three punts.
The Rams seemed content to play the field-position game rather than open it up — a gambit that came back to bite them, especially after a pair of ill-timed penalties gave two early CU scoring drives oxygen. Sanders and offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur simply ducked and weaved until they could fire off some shots of their own.
The haymakers began with 8:47 to go until halftime. On second-and-13 from the CU 44-yard line, with CSU still clinging to that 3-0 cushion, the younger Sanders fired incomplete up the right hashmark for wideout Jimmy Horn Jr. But instead of third-and-forever at midfield, a roughing the passer call on Rams defensive lineman Andrew Laurich gave the visitors a first down at the CU 47. Six plays later, the Buffs QB found Wester on a 4-yard slant for a score, CU’s first of the evening.
Sanders and Wester were just getting warmed up. On the Buffs’ next drive, a series of CU penalties had turned a second-and-1 at the visiting 41 into second-and-21 at the CU 21. The Buffs went back to Welch off the left side, and a big gain flipped the field entirely when a 15-yard face mask call on CSU defensive lineman James Mitchell gave the Buffs first down at the home 48.
Four plays after the flag, Wester got free on a crossing route with 58 seconds left, Sanders found him, and the former outran the CSU secondary for a 34-yard touchdown. The jaunt pushed the Buffs’ cushion to 13-3 and capped arguably the most complete half of the Deion Sanders Era at CU.
“Nobody cares about balance until you get your butt kicked,” the elder Sanders said after the game. “That’s the only time you really care about balance.”
While the home crowd begged to see BFN veering from the safe approach, his aggression backfired on the hosts’ initial drive of the second half. On second-and-9 from the CSU 4, the Rams QB scrambled right in his own end zone and fired a ball over the middle of the field that was intercepted by CU’s Preston Hodge at the 20, with the latter’s 8-yard runback gifting the Buffs the ball at the CSU 12.
The younger Sanders zipped a 2-yard slant to Hunter for a score two plays after that to push CU’s lead to 20-3 and make the rest of the evening academic.
Not that it stopped Sanders and the Buffs, up 19 with 2:55 left, from throwing it five times in their last seven plays.
“As long as the other team is trying to score, we’re trying to score,” Coach Prime said. “That’s my rule.”
Jay Norvell’s Rams, conversely, ran it 31 times, threw it 39 times, and rarely seemed to get out of second gear. Unlike his Buffs counterpart, Fowler-Nicolosi started tentative and stayed there, rolling out sometimes by design, and usually for safety.
“We wanted to play aggressive and we did at times,” Norvell told reporters after the game. “We’ll look at the film and see. It’s hard to say. Whenever you don’t win, you don’t like what you did. I’m not happy with it right now.”
The Rams were salty before the game and chatty during it. But the last word belonged to Hunter and the scoreboard. Not necessarily in that order.
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