Champ Bailey: What makes Travis Hunter so special — and why he’s going to have to pick a side
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Jeff Legwold, ESPN Senior Writer
Champ Bailey always keeps a keen eye out for “the Georgia guys,” players who grew up in the state or played at the University of Georgia. After all, Bailey played high-school ball in the small Georgia town of Folkston and was an All-American for the Bulldogs before his Hall-of-Fame NFL career.
This season, one of those “Georgia guys” is the Heisman Trophy favorite and a top prospect for the 2025 NFL draft — and a common comp to Bailey.
Colorado wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter — a native of Suwanee, Georgia — has captivated the college football landscape by dominating on both sides of the ball. On offense, Hunter has 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns. On defense, he has 33 tackles, four interceptions, 10 pass breakups and a forced fumble. In Colorado’s regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, Hunter became the only FBS player over the past 25 seasons with three scrimmage touchdowns and a defensive INT in a single game, per ESPN Research.
“He’s doing things you probably won’t see again,” Bailey said.
Few can relate to what Hunter has done and will likely try to do in the NFL better than Bailey. In his final season at UGA in 1998, Bailey won the Bronko Nagurski Award as the nation’s best defensive player, picking off three passes at cornerback. But he also caught 47 passes for 744 yards and five touchdowns as a receiver in the Bulldogs’ offense. He topped 1,000 snaps that season and finished seventh in Heisman voting. But Bailey would play almost exclusively cornerback in the NFL after being drafted seventh overall by Washington in 1999, seeing nine targets at receiver over a 15-year career.
Because of his unique perspective, we asked Bailey to weigh in on what makes Hunter so special, why playing both sides of the ball is so difficult and what lies ahead for the Buffaloes’ star in the pre-draft process. Can Hunter — who could be awarded the Heisman Trophy on Saturday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) — do something that Bailey didn’t in his NFL career and play both offense and defense at the next level? Here’s Bailey’s take, in his own words.
Jump to Bailey on:
Hunter’s immense talent
Difficulties of playing two ways
What could happen in the pros
What does Bailey see in Hunter?
The scouting reports for Hunter and Bailey read similarly, albeit 26 years apart. Hunter is listed at 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, while Bailey measured 6-foot, 184 pounds at the 1999 combine. The two also share great speed, explosive traits and ball skills. Bailey has spent time watching Hunter play and sees a future star.
Bailey: He just loves football. You can see it by the way he plays — he’s the ultimate competitor. No player is going to last very long at one position, let alone two, if he doesn’t love the game.
Travis is probably more refined in coverage than I was at that age. He has been schooled better at this point — I mean, his coach is Deion Sanders, one of the best to ever play corner. His hands are in the right place, his eyes are in the right place, and he understands route concepts and where the ball is going. His interceptions are often because he’s going to the spot he knows where the ball is going.
The big difference between me and Travis? People could see him coming more. A lot of guys play both ways in high school, return kicks and punts, play in the band at halftime. And they get to college and the coaches who recruited them — who said they loved the versatility — now tell them the second day of camp, ‘You’re here, you’re here,’ and that’s it. But people could see Travis coming. He did it at Jackson State before transferring in 2023, and Prime said he was going to let him do it at Colorado. So there wasn’t even a question from his coach.
I kind of built up, though. I showed I could do it, played some offense my first year, some more my second year and did the whole thing my last year.
Why is playing both ways so difficult?
Hunter has played 1,380 snaps in 12 games this season, including 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. That’s 382 more snaps than the next-most active player in the FBS, and he topped 100 snaps in 10 of those 12 games. It’s an incredible workload, especially when you consider Hunter had 1,007 snaps in the previous season.
The most active NFL players routinely crack 1,000 snaps in a healthy season playing on just one side of the ball, though. The two-way workload in the pros would be significantly larger, even before factoring in the off-field preparation.
Bailey: In my last season at Georgia, I returned kickoffs and punts, played corner and played wide receiver — they didn’t hold me out of anything. If the ball was out there, I was out there.
I wanted to play both sides of the ball when I got to the league, too, and had some chances to line up and play some offense. But I think the difficulty of really doing it is hard to comprehend.
As you go from high school to college, and college to the NFL, the preparation becomes a big thing for the coaches. You start playing all the snaps on one side of the ball and a lot of snaps on the other and maybe some special teams, but coaches don’t really know what you’re going through. They haven’t done it because not many have. So you’re trying to show them you’re prepared enough to be out there and that you can hold up. That takes convincing.
There isn’t enough said about the accountability that comes with what Hunter is doing, too. Playing both ways means putting extra stuff on your plate, and people are counting on you to do it, so it can’t just be something you want to try. That mental pressure will take the biggest toll unless you really love what you’re doing and go all in. And beyond the physical aspect — which is an immense challenge in itself — you also have to be proficient in two different playbooks. Other guys might have had the talent to do what he’s doing, but we never find out because they don’t have the mentality to really commit to doing it.
I spent most of my time on defense in practice and meetings, and I would get into the offense for specific things. I think my coaches looked at me as the corner who was good enough to put out there at wide receiver, and I studied enough to do it. Offense was more about study time than getting reps on the field or being in all the meetings. I mean, everybody meets at the same time in position groups before team meetings, so you can’t be in everything. Some of it falls on faith you’ll do the work.
You have to be extremely athletic to do what he’s doing and keep focus in his preparation. But aside from all of that is the snap count. The extreme number of snaps he’s playing, the wear and tear and what it takes for him to sustain that — to train for what his body is about to go through.
One thing I dealt with a lot was cramping — there’s a lot of humidity in the SEC. I’d get an IV at halftime of every game, and that became a thing. But I don’t think I actually sat on the bench, even for a second, more than three times all season because I was also on special teams. You have moments where you’re just so tired. But I didn’t even take my helmet off very often.
However, I look at Travis, and guys are so much more informed about offseason prep and the recovery game to game, season to season. It’s way beyond where we were 20-some years ago.
What comes next for Hunter?
When Washington drafted Bailey, he believed there would be at least some two-way play in his NFL future. But he ultimately played corner — both in Washington and later in Denver — seeing six career offensive touches (four catches, two rushes). Can Hunter play both sides in the NFL?
Bailey: My conversations with people before the draft were basically, “You’re a corner, and we’ll find some things on offense for you.” And that’s kind of how I saw it early on. Based on the structure of the meetings and the level of trust a coach needs to see to put you out there, it just wasn’t going to be full-time on both sides for me, no matter what.
In my second year, coach Norv Turner got fired midway through the season. I think if Norv was the coach longer, I would have played offense more in my early years. I believe that. So for Travis, it’s all about who his coach is in the NFL and how much they think is possible. No matter what you can do on the field, the head coach controls the schedule and how you practice. But I say all that, and it’s really not far-fetched that he’ll at least get a shot to try playing both ways.
1:51
Travis Hunter makes strong Heisman case with 3 TDs, INT
Colorado’s Travis Hunter puts up a Heisman-worthy performance against Oklahoma State with three touchdowns and an interception.
If I was that coach making the decision, I’d ask Travis to play full-time corner first because it is far more difficult to find a player like him at CB with all he brings to the position. He is a gifted receiver, no question — a superior receiver. But to find him at corner is so, so rare. He has ball skills, speed, flexibility, quickness, intelligence and tackling ability, and he’s competitive every down.
Corner is also less dependent on the structure around you. You are a part of a defense, but there is a solitude to some of the job in the assignments. His work at receiver will be so dependent on the offensive structure, the quarterback and the O-line; it’s a little more connected. More things have to line up at receiver for him to show all of his skills. And in the meetings, I think it would be more efficient for him to primarily work on defense and get into the offensive meetings he needs to for certain things.
I think his greatest arc for finding success while trying to play both offense and defense is going full-time 100 percent at corner, and then getting some situational work at receiver. I hope he gets a chance to do whatever he wants.
The advantage he has is, whatever he plays, he’s going to be one of the best in the league.
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Chris Low
NASHVILLE — It’s a memory that flashed through Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea’s mind more than once when the program was in the throes of a 26-game SEC losing streak in 2022, his second season as coach.
The memory presented itself again a year ago as Lea guided Vanderbilt to its first winning season since 2013, its first-ever win over a No. 1 team and a bowl victory over Georgia Tech, all culminating with Lea being named SEC Coach of the Year by his peers.
“I remember watching [assistant coach] Robbie Caldwell and my other coaches line the practice field and mow the grass when I played here,” said Lea, a fullback on head coach Bobby Johnson’s first teams at Vanderbilt from 2002-04. “They did everything.”
Contrast that to the scene last October after the Commodores’ signature win of the season, a 40-35 victory over top-ranked Alabama. Following Vanderbilt’s first win over the Crimson Tide in 40 years, fans ripped down the goalposts, paraded them through Nashville and dumped them into the Cumberland River.
The surreality of it all was matched by the resolve of Lea and his players, and their insistence that, in the words of quarterback Diego Pavia, “the rest of the world might have been shocked, but we weren’t.”
“We’re in a business of messaging, and a lot of what I remember as a player is the disconnect from the university and the athletic department and the team, and especially the lack of resources,” Lea said.
It’s a situation Lea inherited when he returned to his alma mater as coach in December 2020 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, as did his boss, Candice Storey Lee, when she was hired a year earlier as the SEC’s first Black female athletic director.
Together, they’re trying to change the narrative and not operate, as Lee jokes, like the little engine that could.
“It was the idea that we were going to unhook from the past and take steps that build toward the future that we all believe we’re capable of here,” said Lee, who has three degrees from Vanderbilt and was on campus the same time as Lea as a captain on the 2002 women’s basketball team that won the SEC tournament.
“Sometimes perception does not match reality, but the reality is that there was a narrative that Vanderbilt was not going to do the things that were necessary to experience consistent success. So from the very beginning, we had to set out to show that we were serious about wanting to compete and compete at the highest level, and we are still doing that. That process isn’t complete.”
Lea’s breakthrough 2024 season in his fourth year back on West End sent perhaps the clearest signal yet that the process is yielding results — and not just in football.
For the first time, Vanderbilt’s football team, men’s and women’s basketball teams and baseball team have all been nationally ranked during the same academic year.
But no climb has been steeper than the one faced by the football program, which was plummeting toward rock bottom when Lea arrived and only got worse during his second season, when the Commodores’ SEC losing streak reached 26 games. Lea wasn’t around for all those losses, but the walls were nonetheless closing in even when the Commodores salvaged a 5-7 record.
Then came 2023, when Vanderbilt dipped to 2-10 (0-8 in the SEC), and the heat ratcheted up on Lea. The Commodores lost all eight of their SEC games by two touchdowns or more.
“Hey, there were days where I was face down on the floor here, and it’s just, ‘Get yourself up, dust yourself off and trust in your resilience to do the next right thing the right way,'” Lea said. “For me, once I kind of realized that I may get my ass kicked a few times, nothing was going to knock me off from leading this program day in, day out, and making the changes that unlock the potential for success.”
Lea wasn’t the only one catching heat from the fans, media and some boosters. So was his former classmate Lee, who hired him. Making matters worse for Lee was that the men’s basketball team was struggling under Jerry Stackhouse and went 4-14 in SEC play during the 2023-24 season. Lee fired Stackhouse after the season and replaced him with Mark Byington, who took a team picked to finish last in the SEC to the NCAA tournament.
“One of the things that I know from going through knee replacement surgery recently is that healing and building is not a linear process,” Lee said. “Some days, it’s really good, and then something happens and I wake up and my knee is swollen. I don’t really understand what happened, but you still have to push forward and know there is something beautiful on the other side.
“You just wish it was easy, but it’s not.”
VANDERBILT’S CAMPUS, A short walk to the heart of downtown Nashville, one of America’s fastest growing cities, is dotted with signs that read “Dare to Grow.” Construction sites, cranes and hard hats are everywhere. Right outside Lea’s office window in the McGugin Center, the transformation of FirstBank Stadium continues with the South End Zone project, featuring premium seating and other amenities. It’s part of the Vandy United $300 million campaign, announced in 2021, to rebuild the school’s athletics facilities.
“We reached that $300 million goal pretty quickly, and we didn’t stop,” Lee said. “We have aspirations beyond that number, so we’re going to keep dreaming. We’re going to keep raising the money, we’re going to keep investing.”
The reality is that Vanderbilt can’t stop if it’s going to have any chance to compete with the football juggernauts in the SEC, especially in the current NIL world. But Lee is insistent that Vanderbilt is “beautifully positioned to maximize whatever model is in front of us” when the House settlement is approved and revenue sharing is in place. The current proposal allows for athletic departments to directly pay athletes with a pool up to $20.5 million in Year 1.
On the facilities front, even with the long overdue facelift to the stadium, the McGugin Center is noticeably outdated with a weight room, team meeting room and offices that pale in comparison to those at other SEC schools. Lea is hopeful a new football operations building comes sooner rather than later but said he doesn’t need a complex loaded with bells and whistles.
Lea looks at the new Huber Center, Vanderbilt’s four-story, state-of-the-art basketball practice facility, and sees what’s possible.
“It’s less important to me and for this program to have things like DJ booths and whatever else,” Lea said. “But I want people to walk into our building and recognize that football is really important here.
“What we’ve done really well here is that our people are the best, and if we can combine that with competitive spaces that also optimize our efficiency, we’re on our way to being where we need to be.”
Some of the people Lea, 43, is talking about are hires that were made primarily during last offseason, when he overhauled just about everything that touched his program. In the last year-plus, he has brought in veteran football people such as senior offensive adviser Jerry Kill, senior defensive analyst Bob Shoop, offensive coordinator Tim Beck and head strength coach Robert Stiner, among others. Kill and Beck are both former head coaches. Stiner and Lea worked together for three seasons at Notre Dame, and Shoop is a former Broyles Award finalist with more than 35 years of coaching experience. He was defensive coordinator under James Franklin for Vanderbilt teams that won nine games in 2012 and 2013.
Offensive line coach Chris Klenakis, entering his second season at Vanderbilt, has seen 24 of his former linemen reach the NFL over a 30-plus year career. He’s also been an offensive coordinator and worked with Colin Kaepernick at Nevada and Lamar Jackson at Louisville.
Lea hasn’t been hesitant to evolve, either. He took over the duties as defensive playcaller last season after the Commodores finished 129th nationally in scoring defense (36.2 points per game) and 131st in total defense (454.9 yards per game) in 2023. Lea said former NFL safety and assistant coach Steve Gregory, in his second season at Vanderbilt, will call defensive plays in 2025.
“I think it’s the best coaching staff in the country,” Pavia said. “Guys are going to want to come here because they see what these coaches get out of players. They see how they develop you. I know what Coach Kill did for me in bringing me here and what that opened up for me.”
PAVIA, WHO EMERGED as one of the most electric players in the country last season after transferring from New Mexico State, played as big a role as anyone in Vanderbilt’s revival. He was the only quarterback in the SEC to pass for more than 2,200 yards and rush for more than 800, accounting for 28 touchdowns, and inside the locker room, he was the heartbeat of a team that reveled in doing what people said couldn’t be done at “little old Vandy.”
Last year’s 7-6 season easily could have been a nine-win campaign. Four of the Commodores’ six losses were by a touchdown or less, including a 30-27 double overtime defeat at Missouri and a 27-24 home loss to Texas in which the Longhorns had to recover an onside kick to seal the game.
And the best part for the Commodores? They return many of the key players from last season, which saw Vanderbilt reach five wins before the end of October, only to lose three of its last four games in the regular season when Pavia wasn’t completely healthy.
“We had one guy transfer out that played for us last year,” said senior linebacker Langston Patterson, who was Lea’s first verbal commitment and went to high school in Nashville at Christ Christian Academy. “It’s about culture. The reason some of those past Vandy teams didn’t sustain success is because they had some great players, but no culture. We have great players on top of great culture, and that creates a great team. But you still have to go do it. Coach Lea touches on it all the time. We’re as close to 2-10 as we are 10-2. We’ve got to keep pushing forward.
“Really, to us, last year was mediocre. We fell apart the last three games. Everyone else thinks we had a great year, but to us, we could have been so much better.”
Lea’s idea of culture transcends the football field. He said the program has had six straight semesters with a collective 3.0 GPA or better in the classroom.
“That’s not because we’re recruiting valedictorians,” Lea said. “It’s because we’re recruiting guys that care about how they’re developing as people too, and they allow us to put boundaries in place for them to reach their highest level.”
As Vanderbilt tries to build on its momentum from a year ago, one thing is certain. The Commodores won’t sneak up on anybody, not after wins over Alabama and Auburn and narrow misses against LSU, Missouri and Texas.
“Nothing changes with us,” Pavia said. “We came here to win games. Coach Lea said it, that we want to have the best program in the SEC. For a lot of guys on this team, it’s our last chance, sort of our last dance, to really flip this program.”
Vanderbilt’s success a year ago came largely thanks to a ball-control offense, shortening the game, winning the turnover battle, stopping the run (especially on early downs) and playing lights-out on special teams.
Even with the recent upgrade in player personnel, it’s always going to be difficult for Vanderbilt to “out-Alabama” Alabama and “out-Georgia” Georgia in terms of sheer talent and depth.
“I know Coach Lea doesn’t believe that we can be like every other SEC team philosophically and find ways to break through to the top,” said offensive coordinator Beck, who also has been a defensive coordinator and spent the first 32 years of his coaching career at Division II powerhouse Pittsburg State. “You have to be a little bit different, and we were a little bit unique. I’m not one of these young offensive coordinators that’s just trying to score as many points as we can every game.
“You try to find ways to reduce the margins a little bit, so you’ve got to play complementary football. We still want to be fun and exciting, which I feel like we are, but we’re not going to be in a huge hurry. We led the nation in forced turnovers last year, which was huge for us because the matchups that we had player to player are still not there yet. We’ve got to be smart about what we do on both sides of the ball.”
Vanderbilt beat Auburn 17-7 last season despite finishing with just 227 total yards. But the Commodores pinned the Tigers inside their own 5-yard line twice, started two of their drives in Auburn territory, committed just three penalties and didn’t turn the ball over once.
“They manage the game as well as anybody,” Auburn coach Hugh Freeze said. “They’re smart. They play to their strengths, and they don’t give you anything.”
As stunning as Vanderbilt’s win over Alabama was to the college football world, Tide coach Kalen DeBoer wasn’t surprised by what he saw this season from Lea and the way he reinvigorated the program.
“I’ve known Clark going back to when he was at South Dakota State, and it wasn’t like we were close friends or anything, but I followed the success he’s had as a coordinator and knew that he was really good,” said DeBoer, who started his coaching career at Sioux Falls. “I felt like watching the film before our game that you could see the defense and the team philosophy revolving around making the game as short as possible, and he did a good job in the critical moments of making some calls.
“I knew going in that they were a different team than what they had been in the past. There was no doubt, and I think everyone who played them would tell you the same thing.”
Now comes the hard part for Lea and Vanderbilt: Doing it all over again.
The only time in the past 50 years that Vanderbilt has put together back-to-back winning seasons was in 2012 and 2013 under Franklin.
Lea, who grew up in Nashville, knows the doubters persist and that history suggests sustaining football success at Vanderbilt is more fantasy than reality. Down deep, he’s energized by that doubt.
“I think we as a program, me in particular, can’t help but operate with a chip on your shoulder, and you can’t help but bathe in the doubt that surrounds you,” Lea said. “We love that, and we don’t recruit beyond that, meaning I don’t want people here that are entitled. I don’t want people here that don’t see the work that has to be done.”
Pavia’s take is a bit more on the coarse side, in typical Pavia fashion.
“I mean, [Lea] comes from ground zero,” Pavia said. “A lot of people weren’t believing in him, people wanting him fired a year ago, and now all of a sudden, he’s the biggest star in Nashville. I think that still fuels him, that people gave up on him, didn’t believe in him on his journey or believe in us.
“So it’s like, ‘F— you. Watch us do it.'”
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Chris Low
The wait for where former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava plays next in his college career continued Wednesday as the spring transfer portal opened.
UCLA is among the schools interested in Iamaleava, but not for nearly the money he was asking for from Tennessee, sources told ESPN. One source said UCLA was content to “sit tight” while Iamaleava considered his options.
“We’ll see if it gets worked out. He’s extremely talented with starting experience against elite competition. That’s sort of where we are right now,” the UCLA source told ESPN.
Sources told ESPN that Iamaleava wanted at least $4 million from Tennessee and that what UCLA was prepared to offer him wasn’t remotely close to that figure. Iamaleava was earning $2.4 million at Tennessee under the contract he signed with Spyre Sports Group, the Tennessee-based collective, when he was still in high school. It’s a deal that would have paid him in the $10 million range had he stayed four years at Tennessee.
Tennessee coach Josh Heupel announced Saturday after the Volunteers’ spring game that the program was moving forward without Iamaleava after he missed practice and meetings Friday and didn’t alert anybody on the team or return any calls or text messages afterward.
Heupel thanked Iamaleava and called the situation unfortunate, but added, “There’s no one bigger than the Power T, and that includes me.”
Iamaleava, a rising redshirt sophomore, officially entered the transfer portal Wednesday with a do not contact tag.
Sources told ESPN that Iamaleava’s representatives asked to redo his deal just before the close of the winter portal in December after Tennessee’s playoff loss to Ohio State, but his deal was unchanged and Iamaleava did not enter the winter portal. His father, Nic Iamaleava, also wanted Tennessee to surround his son with better receivers and a more effective offensive line in pass protection.
Before the start of spring practice this year, Iamaleava’s representatives reached out to Oregon to gauge its interest in the quarterback, but the school said it wasn’t interested, sources told ESPN. Oregon then notified Tennessee that Iamaleava was being shopped to the Ducks.
Iamaleava, a five-star prospect from Long Beach, California, was recruited by UCLA out of high school. His younger brother, Madden Iamaleava, committed to UCLA out of high school but changed his commitment at the last minute and signed with Arkansas.
With Iamaleava a possibility at UCLA, sources told ESPN that representatives for the Bruins’ current quarterback, Joey Aguilar, have been covering their bases and making calls to other schools to gauge their interest in Aguilar, who transferred from Appalachian State this offseason and exited spring practice as UCLA’s likely starter.
A Power 4 general manager told ESPN’s Pete Thamel and Max Olson earlier this week that he thought Iamaleava has “zero market,” and added that it would be an “interesting test of how smart and disciplined colleges are in looking at him.”
Iamaleava helped guide Tennessee to the College Football Playoff last season in his first year as a starter. He passed for 2,616 yards, 19 touchdowns and 5 interceptions, but in nine games against SEC opponents and Ohio State in the playoff, he passed for more than 200 yards only twice.
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