The game goes deeper than the Heis-men

College football has an iceberg of good stories, and here are four that didn't get to New York.

Travis Hunter is college football’s Shohei Ohtani. He just won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s best receiver and the Chuck Bednarik Award as the best defensive back. You can quibble with either, but there was nothing ceremonial about what he was attempting. No big-league college player had ever averaged more than 150 snaps on each side of the ball. Hunter had 688 on defense, 672 on offense.

No Power-4 Conference receiver matched Hunter’s 92 catches. On defense, with opponents avoiding Hunter’s side of the field as if it were a cliff, Hunter still had four interceptions and 11 pass breakups.

On Saturday, Hunter sits in New York with the expectation of winning the Heisman Trophy. In 1997, Charles Woodson of Michigan beat out Peyton Manning of Tennessee for the award, mainly because Woodson, an unquestionably dominant cornerback, had dabbled in offense as well. He caught 11 passes for 231 yards and one touchdown. That was moonlighting, but it worked. Hunter was the leader of both units at once at Colorado, and he did at 5,430 feet, at least for home games. Better yet, Hunter and his quarterback, Shedeur Sanders, will play for Colorado in the Alamo Bowl against Brigham Young instead of following the McCaffrey Doctrine and bailing on their teammates. Who knows, Hunter might be capable of tearing his ACL in the first quarter and patching it together at halftime.

Hunter, Sanders, Boise State running back Alston Jeanty, Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel and Miami quarterback Cam Ward all spiced up the college season. So did quarterback Kyle McCord of Syracuse, who had the most passing yards. McCord finished 10th in Heisman voting, getting more votes than anyone from Ohio State, where McCord played in 2023 and was judged unworthy because the Buckeyes didn’t beat Michigan.

Nevertheless, college football is a massive iceberg, with most of its real substance found underneath. The following players won’t be seen in the College Football Playoff, but their handiwork in 2024 won’t be forgotten.

Haynes King, Georgia Tech

Those who watched four quarters and eight overtimes of Georgia Tech and Georgia know who the best player on that field was. King completed 26 of 36 passes for 303 yards and two touchdowns, then ran 24 times for 110 yards and three scores. No one had ever gone 300-100 and run for three TDs against a Top Ten opponent, let alone an NFL starter kit like Georgia. At times King looked like he needed an 8-count to get from the huddle to the line of scrimmage, but he kept coming. By then he’d already accumulated his own fan club, with a 72.5 percent completion rate and only one interception.

King transferred in from Texas A&M. He’s a coach’s son from Longview, Tex., and that’s where he learned how the running game works. That’s where he first became a legend, too, as he led Longview to its first state championship since 1937.

King broke his ankle in a game at Colorado, and didn’t see a future in Aggieland. His dad told him he couldn’t transfer unless he graduated, so King did that in three years. But Georgia Tech was a moribund program when he got there. This year the Yellow Jackets were the first team to expose Florida State, the first team to knock off Miami, and went 7-5 to earn a Birmingham Bowl spot opposite Vanderbilt.

“He’s a football junkie,” said quarterback coach Chris Weinke, the former Heisman Trophy winner. “It’s in his blood and he can’t get enough. That’s rare, these days.”

Carson Schwesinger, UCLA

The Bruins didn’t have a comfortable introduction to Big Ten football, but they did havve the top tackler in their new conference, and the juicy part is that any of those schools, and anyone else, could have had Schwesinger. He was a walk-on from Oaks Christian High in Thousand Oaks, Ca., and his senor year coincided with Covid-19. At the urging of high school coach Charles Collins, UCLA gave him preferred walk-on status, and away he went. But it wasn’t unfamiliar for Schwesinger. He had transferred to Oaks Christian when his previous school, Santa Clarita, gave up 11-man football for the 8-man game, and he was the stranger trying to break into an established program.

It took Schwesinger one year to earn a scholarship, mainly because he kept blocking kicks in practice. This season he had 90 solo tackles, 40 more than any other Bruin, plus eight-and-a-half tackles for loss.

But when practice is over, Schwesinger heads into an even more demanding field. He majors in bioengineering at the Samueli School of Engineering, and hopes to develop devices to help athletes conquer injuries. That sometimes requires him to write papers on the long flights back from Big Ten outposts. Schwesinger gains two to three hours on those return trips. He could use every minute.

Nick Nash, San Jose State

In giving Hunter the Biletnikoff Award, the voters either ignored or low-rated Nash, who won the unofficial receivers’ triple crown. Nash led the FBS in catches (104), yardage (1,382) and touchdowns (16). He caught touchdowns in 16 consecutive games for the Spartans.

The fact that Nash also threw two touchdowns was no surprise to those at Woodbridge High in Irvine, Ca., where he was a quarterback. The Spartan coaches played him there, too, and Nash tossed three TD passes against New Mexico. They also thought he’d make a fine safety. Nash has only been a fulltime receiver for two years, and thought he might have to transfer when Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo took over the program. Niumatalolo ran the option, and his quarterbacks either handed off or pitched. But the new coaching staff had some run-and-shoot advocates as well and, as good coaches do, they adjusted to their best players.

San Jose State was 2-1 against teams in the old Pac-12, losing only to Washington State, 54-52, in double overtime. “It’s pretty cool, the story that I have,” Nash said. “I’d love to be remembered just as I am, a hard worker that loved the game and was willing to play any position it took.”

Tre Stewart, Jacksonville State

Rich Rodriguez made his return to West Virginia this week. He has taken the scenic route. Rodriguez won in Morgantown, took the Michigan job, went to Arizona when that didn’t work, and wound up at Jacksonville State, in Alabama, when that didn’t work. Jacksonville State won Conference USA this year, and Rodriguez showed he was a master of strategy when he kept giving the ball to Stewart.

In a win at Liberty, Stewart gained 123 yards in six carries. That was in the first quarter. He had back-to-back 200-yard games for the Gamecocks, and his 1,604 yards ranked third in the FBS, even though he had only eight carries in the first two games. He also scored 23 touchdowns, and in the Conference USA title game against Western Kentucky, he had 201 yards on 27 carries.

Stewart might be a low-round NFL pick, which would be a triumph in itself. A knee injury knocked him out of his junior season at his Winston-Salem, N.C. high school, and he wound up at Limestone College, a Division 2 school at Frank Underwood’s hometown of Gaffney, S.C. Coach Mike Furrey brought the Mike Martz offense to the school, and Stewart had 2,994 yards in two years. If nothing else Stewart probably leads the nation in yards per NIL stipend, but he plans to keep running, knowing the dollars can’t hide.