The rise and tragic fall of Rashaan Salaam, Colorado’s first Heisman Trophy winner

Travis Hunter is likely to become the Buffs' second Heisman winner Saturday night. The story of Colorado's first recipient should never be forgotten

NOTE: This story includes details of suicide. If you are in crisis, please take the first step in getting help by calling or texting the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

If betting markets and oddsmakers are to be believed – and when have they ever been wrong? – Travis Hunter will make the 1,800-mile trek from New York back to Boulder, Colo. with a coveted, 45-pound piece of hardware by his side.

Though Ashton Jeanty’s stellar, potentially historic season has put the Boise State running back firmly into the conversation for the award, Hunter appears increasingly likely to hoist the Heisman Trophy Saturday night in Manhattan, with some of the sport’s most iconic figures standing behind him applauding.

It will be a fitting ending to a superb season, though the question of whether it should be Hunter or Jeanty feels like one of those debates that doesn’t really have a wrong answer.

The Colorado star has not only shouldered an immense workload – having logged an extraordinary 1,380 snaps this season – but he has excelled while doing so. As a wide receiver, he’s sixth in the FBS in yards and second in touchdown catches. On defense, playing cornerback under the tutelage of arguably the greatest defensive back in the sport’s history, he has four interceptions and 11 pass break-ups. Earlier this week, he was crowned the winner of the Biletnikoff Award, given annually to the best wide receiver in college football, and the Bednarik Award, the honor for the best defensive player in the sport. As you might have guessed, he’s the first player to ever do that in a single year.

For the majority of college football fans across the country, they’ve never seen a player like Hunter and are unlikely to ever do so again. What he’s on the precipice of accomplishing, though, isn’t unprecedented in the history of the program he represents.

In 1994, nearly a full decade before Hunter was born, Rashaan Salaam became the first and, for at least a few more hours, only Heisman Trophy winner in Colorado history. He wasn’t the historical outlier that Hunter is by playing both ways, but given what he did on the ground, he didn’t need to be. Salaam helped carry (literally) a Buffs team that went 11-1 and was No. 3 in the final Associated Press poll, rushing for 2,055 yards and 24 touchdowns, both of which ranked him among the best players in college football history.

Salaam’s name isn’t quite as revered or widely known as many of his fellow Heisman winners. He didn’t play for a national championship team, though Colorado came awfully close. He didn’t enjoy a lengthy NFL career. If anything, his Heisman season is more famous for who didn’t win the award – Division I-AA phenom and future NFL MVP Steve McNair. And while his portrait hangs among some of the most recognizable faces in the game’s history, he seldom attended the Heisman ceremony.

Thirty years after he won it, the Heisman is still the thing most closely associated with Salaam, the thing most likely to come out of one’s mouth in response if his name is ever mentioned, even eight years after his death.

But while the Heisman is a career pinnacle for many, the fulfillment of a long-lingering dream, it was anything but for its 60th recipient.

The rise of a college football superstar

Salaam had an unconventional football upbringing for someone who would ultimately go on to claim one of the sport’s most coveted awards at any level.

His father, Sultan Abdus-Salaam (formerly known as Teddy Washington) was a running back himself, playing collegiately at Colorado and San Diego State before a brief stint in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals.

As his teenager, his mother took an unusual step that would come to define his Heisman journey. Khalada Salaam operated a private elementary school and valued her son’s education, an urge that prompted her to take Rashaan out of his neighborhood school and enroll him at La Jolla Country Day, a ritzy private school about 30 minutes outside downtown San Diego and with an annual tuition of $8,500 (about $21,000 today).

With an enrollment of just 250 students, La Jolla played in a class with other small schools, all of which competed in eight-man football rather than the traditional 11-man game. Salaam dominated, rushing 4,965 yards and scoring 112 touchdowns in his career, setting several local high school records. He racked up those numbers despite sitting out the second half of many of his team’s lopsided victories.

Though he competed for a school that wasn’t a traditional football power and played an unconventional form of the game, colleges across the country took notice of Salaam. He had originally planned on staying in state and attending Cal, but was goaded into taking one final visit to Colorado. Once there, he fell in love and committed to the Buffs, who were fresh off a national championship in 1990.

In 1992, in just his first week of practice at Colorado, it became clear to some what kind of player coach Bill McCartney had managed to lure to Boulder.

“This kid’s going to win the Heisman,” Fred Casotti, the school’s longtime sports information director, reportedly said.

How Rashaan Salaam won the Heisman

While he was a prized recruit at one of the nation’s best college programs at the time, Salaam very nearly lost whatever chance he had at earning a Heisman at Colorado before his journey there could begin.

He played sparingly as a freshman, logging only 27 carries, and strongly considered transferring before being convinced by his mother to stay. Things got only marginally better as a sophomore, when he was a part-time starter who split carries with Lamont Warren and finished No. 2 on the team in rushing yards.

Near the end of that 1993 season, though, a road to stardom began to emerge. He finished his sophomore campaign strong, rushing for 135 yards in a victory over Fresno State in the Aloha Bowl and after Warren departed for the NFL following the season, the feature role in the backfield was finally his.

Blessed with the genes of an NFL running back, Salaam very much looked the part of a star at the position. At 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds, he had the long, smooth stride of a sprinter, but the latent physicality and unrelenting desire for contact more common for an offensive lineman than a skill-position player.

It didn’t take long for the rest of the country to see those traits.

After a 2-0 start, the Buffs headed to Michigan on Sept. 24 for a matchup of top-10 teams. Salaam rushed for 141 yards and two touchdowns, but his most important contribution came on the game’s final play. Trailing 26-21, Colorado had the ball at its own 36-yard line and with only enough time left to run one play. Kordell Stewart dropped back and threw a heave that ended up in the hands of receiver Michael Westbrook for a 64-yard game-winning touchdown that’s still one of the most famous plays in college football history. If you watch the play, you can notice Salaam throwing a key block on a Michigan defender that gave Stewart precious extra seconds to dance around in the pocket and throw a pass that traveled 73 yards in the air.

An even bigger performance awaited the following week.

On the road against No. 16 Texas, Salaam knifed through the oppressive Austin humidity for 317 rushing yards, along with five catches for 45 yards, in a 34-31 victory against the Longhorns. With that, what had appeared like a longshot Heisman campaign three weeks earlier had all the steam it needed.

“I don’t see myself as the hero,” Salaam said after the game. “I think the offensive line is the hero.”

Few others saw it that way, particularly as Salaam continued to compile outrageous rushing totals. He put up four consecutive 200-yard rushing games and after being held in check in a 38-point win against Wisconsin on Sept. 17, he finished the regular season with nine straight 100-yard rushing outings. Even in his team’s lone loss, a 24-7 setback on the road against eventual national champion Nebraska, he was excellent, rushing for 134 yards and the Buffs’ lone touchdown while averaging 6.1 yards per carry.

He entered Colorado’s regular-season finale against Iowa State 204 yards short of 2,000 for the season, a mark only three players in FBS history had ever reached. Needing 12 more yards to reach the mark early in the fourth quarter, Salaam ripped off a 67-yard touchdown run, helping him finish the day with 259 yards.

For the season, he rushed for 2,055 yards and 24 touchdowns while averaging 6.9 yards per carry and 186.8 yards per game. His rushing total ranked him fourth all-time in 1994 and even today, with a longer season padding the stats of many of the ball-carriers that followed him, Salaam still has the 20th-most rushing yards in a season in FBS history. He did all of that despite sitting out the fourth quarter in five of Colorado’s 11 games, two of which saw him play only a part of the third quarter, as well.

Buoyed by those numbers and his team’s success, Salaam won the Heisman by a substantial margin. His 400 first-place votes ranked him well ahead of second-place finisher Ki-Jana Carter’s 115.

In interviews after his win, a noticeably uncomfortable Salaam took the same approach he did after his career day against Texas, shifting attention away from himself as quickly as he could by thanking his offensive line, all of whom were back in Boulder cheering for him and smoking cigars.

A night in which he was the reluctant center of the college football world would be the apex of his career.

From Heisman Trophy winner to NFL bust

Shortly after rushing for three touchdowns in the Buffs’ 41-24 rout of Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl, Salaam decided to bypass his final year of eligibility and head to the NFL.

Taken by the Chicago Bears with the No. 21 pick in the 1995 NFL Draft, Salaam rushed for a franchise rookie record 1,074 yards and 10 touchdowns in his first professional season.

What seemed like a bright future was quickly derailed by injuries. In his second season, he battled through knee and hamstring issues. The following year, he broke his right leg and tore an ankle ligament. During his recovery, he started walking too soon and broke a screw in his leg, leading to another surgery.

The Bears tried trading him to the Miami Dolphins in 1998, but the deal was nixed after Salaam failed a physical. He played for the expansion Cleveland Browns for two games in 1999 and made subsequent comeback attempts, but never made it past training camp. After just 33 games, his NFL career was over.

During one of those comeback attempts, this one with the Oakland Raiders, he sat down for a one-on-one with ESPN’s Solomon Wilcots, a fellow former Colorado football player. During the interview, Salaam said his habitual marijuana use made him “lackadaisical” on the field – contributing to his pronounced fumbling issues – and that he “pretty much spent my time sitting around getting high.” With marijuana use still an unforgivable sin in the NFL, Salaam’s comments drew national attention and by the end of camp, he was released by the Raiders.

It became one of several things, along with his lengthy list of injuries, that Salaam blamed for the failure of his NFL career, which ended before his 26th birthday.

But when looking back on his short-lived pro experience, another culprit often emerged.

The burden of the Heisman Trophy

During his days in New York for the Heisman ceremony, Salaam struck up a bond with Warren Sapp, the Miami defensive lineman and future Pro Football Hall of Famer, who finished sixth in the voting that season.

In their conversations, Salaam made it clear he didn’t want to win the Heisman, knowing the pressure and expectations it brought to its winner.

"Dawg, don't even sweat this," Sapp told Salaam. "It's just a trophy."

There’s some version of a speech that’s delivered every year before the Heisman is presented in which it’s noted that the player receiving the award will be associated with it forever.

For Salaam, it became an albatross that was much heavier than a 45-pound cast bronze sculpture. In the moment, it thrust him into a spotlight he never craved. In the years that followed, it was an omnipresent reminder of his shortcomings.

The signs were there before he even won it. In Oct. 1994, he told a reporter that he was scared of winning the Heisman because of everything that comes with it. As he put it, he just wanted to play football. He was scared to answer his own phone and would often disguise his voice when speaking with someone with a number he didn’t recognize.

After he was revealed as the winner, his teammates congratulated him, but he often pushed back.

"His exact words to me were, 'Look, the Heisman was a curse. I don't look at it as a blessing,’” former Colorado safety Tim James told ESPN in 2019.

In the years after his win, he ran away from the trophy as successfully as he evaded all those would-be tacklers in college. Every Heisman winner is invited to attend the ceremony when a new member is added to their exalted club. Salaam made the trip to New York only five times out of a possible 22 years.

When he did go, he was greeted with painful reminders. During an autograph session all the previous winners staged in 2014, his first time at the Heisman presentation in nearly a decade, Salaam lamented to a friend that nobody ever came through his line. In 2015, what would be the final year he’d attend, someone called his hotel room asking him to come to a private event, to which Salaam angrily responded “I’m not going to that. Nobody wants my fucking autograph.”

His tortured relationship with the award was made worse because he received few, if any, of the benefits it affords so many of its winners.

He tried his hand at several business ventures, from mixed-martial arts promotion in China to the then-newly legalized marijuana industry in Colorado in the mid-2010s, but failed to turn anything into a sustainable and profitable career. He shied away from other arrangements, believing potential partners were simply trying to take advantage of him. At one point, he even took a job transporting cattle.

Searching for some kind of purpose and a source of steady income, Salaam did what many savvy ex-college jocks do and returned to the town where he was still widely remembered as a hero.

In 2013, and after encouragement from former teammates, he moved back to Colorado, settling in a quiet suburb about 15 minutes outside Boulder. He arrived with the hopes of landing a job of some sort with the Buffs’ athletic department or football program, potentially as a brand ambassador, fundraiser or perhaps even an assistant on the football staff. He had preliminary discussions with then-Colorado athletic director Mike Bohn, who resigned from the role under pressure in 2013. Bohn’s replacement, Rick George (who’s still the AD today), told Sports Illustrated in 2019 that he never spoke with Salaam about such a role with the school.

A number of roadblocks prevented it from happening. Salaam never earned a degree from the university and was 60 credit hours short of doing so after he effectively stopped attending classes during his Heisman-winning 1994 season. Even to friends and family, he had a habit of going dark, of not returning calls or messages for weeks, if he even got back to them at all.

To Salaam, though, it was akin to betrayal. As he saw it, even the school where he was the only Heisman Trophy winner ever had little use for him.

“We aren't having this conversation today if he was affiliated with that program in any capacity, be it the mailman or the athletic director," Greg Morrissey, an intern with the Bears with whom Salaam remained close, said to ESPN in 2019. "There's a reason he moved back from San Diego to Boulder. It wasn't to go skiing. It wasn't to go hiking. It was to be back where he was loved."

He later found work with a Denver-based nonprofit called Supporting People In Need (SPIN.) Salaam had long enjoyed working with children and for the fledgling organization, it gave it a valuable association with a famous name that resonated in the region. Around that same time, he was connected with a local businessman who would set up speaking engagements for him, for which they’d charge a fee. When event organizers would ask him to bring the Heisman with him, which they often would, he’d usually refuse.

“If people want Rashaan, they get Rashaan,” Salaam would say, according to Sports Illustrated. “‘They don’t get Rashaan and The Trophy. Marcus Allen and all these other [Heisman winners], when they do events, do you see them taking their trophies?”

Those exchanges were emblematic of Salaam’s mental state at the time and the immense strain the Heisman still placed on him.

He took steps to try to rid himself of it. In 2011, he sold off his Heisman ring for $8,140. In 2018, it was revealed that two years before his death, Salaam sold his Heisman Trophy, which he had kept at his mother’s house in San Diego.

Those sales gave him a much-needed infusion of cash, but it did little to disassociate himself from the award.

The Heisman followed him everywhere he went. Even into death.

The untimely death of a Heisman Trophy winner

On the night of Dec. 5, 2016, seven days before Lamar Jackson would be crowned as the latest Heisman winner, a passerby found a lifeless Salaam outside of his girlfriend’s car at Eben G. Fine Park in Boulder, wearing a black shirt, gray sweatpants and black sneakers.

Later that month, authorities’ initial suspicions were confirmed and Salaam’s death, caused by a gunshot wound to the head, was ruled a suicide. He was 42 years old.

The obituary from the New York Times came with the headline Rashaan Salaam, Heisman Trophy Winner with Colorado, Dies at 42.

An autopsy revealed he had a blood-alcohol reading of 0.25, more than three times the legal driving limit, and had 55 nanograms per milliliter of THC in his system. He died carrying $63 and a passport. He left behind a pair of notes found on the rear floorboard of his girlfriend’s 2006 Suzuki Forenza. One read “Some days good - Some days bad - Fuck Rashaan Salaam - Don't be sad!! - No funerals please” while the other stated “No funerals wakes memorials let me be in peace!!"

He was believed to be just the second Heisman winner to take his own life, after former Yale end Larry Kelley, who won in 1936, shot himself in 2000 at the age of 85, not long after suffering a stroke.

In the days after his death, friends and family speculated on what led him to that lonely and desperate place in which he spent the final moments of his life.

His post-football employment struggles, his extended disappearances and his bouts with depression were well-known to those closest to him. His brother, Jabali Alaji, told USA Today that Salaam displayed all the symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – anxiety, depression, apathy and memory loss, among them – and that he showed no signs of serious substance abuse.

“When I opened the house, I expected to go into a house of somebody who was on drugs or find alcohol in the trash can,” Alaji said. “But when I walked into the house and saw how clean the house was, it shocked me. I went through his trash can. I went through hiding spaces expecting to find pill bottles, or bottles of liquor. None of that was there. He didn’t even take Motrin, you know what I mean?”

According to Salaam’s mother, the coroner called shortly after her son’s death and asked whether she wanted to send Salaam’s brain to Boston University to be tested for CTE. She declined. Initially, the family’s Muslim faith was cited as the reason for the refusal, but Khalada told ESPN that “I wouldn't have done it as a Christian. No, he -- we -- wanted to bury Rashaan intact."

******

During Colorado’s 2024 regular-season finale, a 52-0 blowout of Oklahoma State on Nov. 29, Hunter punctuated his Heisman case with arguably his best game of the season, with 116 receiving yards, three touchdown catches and an interception. After the victory, Buffs coach Deion Sanders said his two-way star “clinched” the Heisman.

He saved the best for last, with his final touchdown grab standing as his most impressive of the day. In what would be his final offensive play ever at Folsom Field, he fought through contact from an Oklahoma State cornerback to haul in a 23-yard pass from Shedeur Sanders early in the fourth quarter.

With the announced crowd of 51,030 sent into hysteria, Hunter rose from the turf, turned to the stadium’s east stands and struck the Heisman pose. Staring down at him were more than just adoring fans, but a collection of retired numbers displayed on the outside of the school’s collection of luxury suites, a place where Hunter may one day find himself and his No. 12 jersey number.

In that moment on that triumphant afternoon, one name and number in particular loomed that much larger – 19, Rashaan Salaam.

(Photos: Associated Press, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Sun-Times, Colorado Springs Gazette, Boulder Daily Camera)