BOULDER — Shedeur Sanders flu under the radar. Dude prac­ticed one day last week. One. Before he went viral, No. 2 felt viral.

“It was tough out there get­ting the chem­istry back with every­body,” the CU Buffs’ QB1 explained ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, hav­ing pow­ered through influen­za to throw for 323 yards in a 34–23 win over Cincin­nati. “Because you lose weight, you lose strength, you lose a lot of things.”

Not touch. Not zip. Not feel. Not mojo. Shedeur com­plet­ed his first 15 pass­es. In a half. Against a good Cincin­nati team. Against a Bearcats defense that allowed 19 com­ple­tions to Texas Tech last month — over a whole game.

For the evening, Sanders threw it 30 times. He com­plet­ed 25, with two touch­downs through the air and anoth­er on the ground. From a sick guy who was plant­i­ng on one good leg by the end of the third quarter.

Travis Hunter checks in at 185 pounds. I mean, he takes up that much room on your Heis­man Tro­phy bal­lot? Really?

“They’re not gonna give (it to) two play­ers on the same team,” Sanders, son of sec­ond-year CU coach Deion Sanders, reflect­ed with a shrug when asked about he and Hunter split­ting, if not mas­ti­cat­ing, one another’s Heis­man candidacies.

“Me and Trav, (we) just deal with it. It’s not gonna hap­pen like that … so it is what it is. I don’t real­ly look too deep into that. I just want Travis to win, of course. And that’ll be almost like I won. Because I threw him the ball.”

With that, Shedeur smiled. Even the most cyn­i­cal scribes in the room had to chuck­le at that one.

“Travis, he is the best play­er in col­lege foot­ball, hands-down,” Son of Prime con­tin­ued. “And I’m excit­ed for him to win it. And that’s tru­ly — that’ll just make my day right there.”

When ESPN.com asked 14 staff writ­ers to par­tic­i­pate in a mid-sea­son Heis­man poll back on Oct. 15, Shedeur didn’t land a sin­gle vote.

Boise State tail­back Ash­ton Jean­ty led the mock field with 11 first-place tal­lies, fol­lowed by Hunter (three), Mia­mi QB Cam Ward, Ore­gon QB Dil­lon Gabriel and Indi­ana QB Kur­tis Rourke.

It’s Jeanty’s award to lose, large­ly because his Bron­cos won’t lose — with UNLV out of the way, there’s no Moun­tain West/2‑Pac team left on the slate that Boise can’t beat.

Rourke and coach Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers are all kinds of legit, but the former’s dinged up. Plus, the Crim­son and Cream rout­ed Wash­ing­ton this past week­end with­out the ser­vices of their afore­men­tioned QB.

Gabriel’s thrown for 18 scores with five picks; Sanders has thrown for 21 with six. Ward’s beat­en four teams with win­ning records; Sanders has beat­en three. Oh, and thrown for an aver­age of 359.3 yards in those games while sport­ing a touch­down-to-inter­cep­tion ratio of 10-to‑1.

By the way, 15 for 15 to open a game is a new CU school record, bump­ing Joel Klatt and Steven Montez’s 12 straight com­ple­tions to joint No. 2.

Again, one day of prac­tice. One.

What’s that? Still no room?

“Wow, wow, wow,” Deion Sanders said after his Buffs clinched bowl eli­gi­bil­i­ty vs. Cin­cy, mov­ing to 6–2 and 4–1 in the Big 12 while also stay­ing with­in touch­ing dis­tance of BYU, Iowa State and Kansas State in the league title chase. “And they don’t even men­tion him for the Heis­man? He’s not even men­tioned? Oh, my bad. He’s my son. That’s why.”

It’s not. Hunter’s uni­corn nar­ra­tive is the big­ger prob­lem, frankly, the way it sucks up the oxy­gen on the bal­lot that Jean­ty hasn’t already gob­bled up.

Although that’s not an excuse for vot­ers, either. At all. Since 2004, team­mates have fin­ished among the top 5 in Heis­man vot­ing sev­en times, and four times since 2016. The last team­mates to land in the top 3 in the same Heis­man vot­ing cycle came in 2020 when Alabama’s DeVon­ta Smith (No. 1) and Mac Jones (No. 3) head­ed up a very Tide-cen­tric group of final­ists. The last two to land with­in the top 6 in the same year were Bama’s Bryce Young (No. 1) and Will Ander­son Jr. (No. 5) in 2021.

Some nation­al back­lash against CU foot­ball, you can under­stand. Coach Prime’s tipped over just about every sacred cow in the col­lege game, from recruit­ing, NIL deals, spon­sor­ships and staff hires to media access. Like the Oak­land Raiders of old, his Buffs are brash and bold, fast and furi­ous, and don’t give a darn what you or I think. And nev­er will.

But any back­lash against Shedeur is straight-up Looney Tunes.

Con­sid­er: He’s racked up as many vic­to­ries over a sea­son-and-a-half as a Buffs starter (10) as CU won, com­bined, in 2019 (five), 2021 (four) and 2022 (one). On the Buffs’ career charts, his 48 CU TD pass­es since 2023 trail only Sefo Liu­fau (60), Steven Mon­tez (63) and Cody Hawkins (63), all of whom piled up their num­bers over more games.

You want a guy who com­bines great abil­i­ty with dili­gence, per­se­ver­ance and hard work? Go back and watch No. 2 try to run the CU offense after suf­fer­ing what looked like an ankle tweak late in the third stan­za, a knock that left him notice­ably limp­ing between plays. Yet over the final 21 min­utes of the sec­ond half, Sanders still had enough juice to com­plete four of five throws for 64 yards and get the Buffs over the line.

“(I’m) a lit­tle banged up,” Shedeur admit­ted Sun­day. “But we won, so it’ll make every­thing feel a lit­tle bet­ter. For sure.”

You want a “Heis­man moment?” No. 2 pro­duces three to four per game. Pick your oppo­nent. Pick your week. Give Shedeur enough time and a few time­outs, he thinks he can score from any­where. And usu­al­ly does.

Cin­cy found that out the hard way. With 31 sec­onds left before half­time, the Buffs defense stoned the Bearcats on a fourth-and‑1 at mid­field, giv­ing the hosts the ball back at the CU 46 with two time­outs left. It took five pass­es and 28 sec­onds for Sanders to find the end zone again. An extra point pushed the hosts’ cush­ion to 10 with three sec­onds until half­time, flip­ping the field and momen­tum for the rest of the evening.

“You look around all these lists, and Shedeur’s name isn’t on them,” Coach Prime reflect­ed. “I don’t care. I real­ly don’t. I don’t. It’s just strange. It’s just fun­ny to me. I just think — it’s just igno­rant. But it’s funny.”

Hunter’s the most out­stand­ing play­er of this or any dozen col­lege sea­sons. But if your Heis­man vote leaves Shedeur in the cold, my friend, the joke’s on you.

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