The rumours started circulating early on the morning of December 15th, the opening of college football’s early signing window, in which the nation’s highly-rated high school recruits can sign their letters of intent to play at their colleges of choice. Analysts began to hear that something was brewing in Jackson, Mississippi that might just change the face of college football forever, yet the possible magnitude of it all was hard to comprehend.

The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman, arguably the most plugged-in reporter in the sport tweeted: “Deion Sanders flipping Travis Hunter, the nation’s No. 1 recruit (and a CB no less) from his alma mater, FSU, to join him at an HBCU, Jackson State, would unquestionably become the biggest signing day stunner in my 20-plus years of covering this stuff.”

Surely it was all hearsay, part of the rich tapestry of deception that accompanies signing day every year. Yes, big time recruits had historically made last-minute decisions that had shocked the sport: CJ Spiller making his mother cry on stage as he announced he was going to Clemson instead of Florida, the team he’d grown up supporting. Or Chris Simms flipping from Tennessee to Texas and devastating Rocky Top. And perhaps the most shocking of them all: Lorenzo Booker, the #1 running back in the country, destined for Notre Dame, stepping to the podium to announce he was off to South Bend, only to begin weeping and confess that whilst he loved the Irish, he just couldn’t commit. “I gotta go to Florida State, I just got to,” he cried out, tears streaming down his face.

But none of them came close to what happened with Travis Hunter who, ten days before Christmas, stood on stage at his high school in Suwannee, Georgia and did the impossible, eschewing three-time National Champion Florida State and Power 5 college football, instead grabbing a Jackson State University baseball cap thrown to him by a teammate and announcing he was taking his generational talents to an FCS school, coached by the greatest cornerback of all time. “This is the biggest signing day moment in the history of college football,” said Steve Wiltfong, director of national recruiting for 247Sports. “And then some.”

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Hunter’s path to that dramatic day began when his family moved from Florida to Georgia and the Collins Hill High School football programme that developed his natural gifts, turning him into America’s best two-way prospect in decades. As a sophomore, he led the nation with seven picks and 919 yards receiving, following that up a year later with eight more interceptions, and hauling in 137 passes for 1,746 yards and 24 touchdowns, earning Georgia’s Player of the Year honours. By then, he’d been offered scholarships by every major school in the nation and, after taking a visit to Tallahassee in March 2020, announced a verbal commitment to Florida State. For a once-great Seminoles team that had endured back-to-back-to-back disappointing seasons, it was a programme-changing moment, and a ringing endorsement of new head coach Mike Norvell. “I’ve never felt like a recruit there,” Hunter said after a second visit to the campus a few months after his announcement. “That’s one of the reasons I committed so early. Going back there, it’s like going to my different house, just in another state.”

So what changed?

“The irony in all this is that Deion Sanders could have been, and probably should have been, the Florida State head coach after Willie Taggert was fired,” says Doc Staples, who was a walk-on at FSU from 2000–2002 and has covered the team since 2007. “He interviewed for the job back in 2020 and he was serious about it. He laid out a comprehensive plan for how he was going to fix things, starting with winning the state of Florida in terms of recruiting. But they decided he wasn’t ready. And Deion was pissed that they went with Norvell — that stayed with him. But, as probably the best player in school history, he didn’t give up on FSU. He even helped them with recruiting. And the ultimate irony is that Norvell would use him to call up recruits, call up their parents, and persuade them to commit to the ‘Noles. I mean, Deion leaves quite an impression. And, when you’re the greatest cornerback in the history of the NFL, that resonates with the kids and it resonates with mom and dad. But I’m pretty sure no-one in Tallahassee thought him trying to out-recruit everyone else would come back to bite them so hard.”

In September 2020, as the COVID pandemic raged through America, FCS conferences moved their scheduled games to the spring of 2021, and Jackson State, one of the most historic of Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) hired Sanders to a mix of fanfare and scepticism. But, despite the naysayers, the Tigers went 11-1 and won their conference championship for the first time since 2007. Sanders was named Coach of the Year, and his son won Freshman of the Year. Yet that only went so far with ‘Coach Prime’. He wanted to prove that the Tigers’ success wasn’t just a one-off by changing the face of college football and showing Power 5 schools that they’d committed a huge mistake in not hiring him.

Quietly and methodically, he began working away in the background on a pledge he’d made in his opening address to the media when he’d got the job: “We’re going to win the recruiting game here. We’re going to turn a lot of heads; I promise you that.”

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Throughout Hunter’s recruitment, he’d turned down multiple chances to change his mind, refusing trips to Alabama, Clemson, Michigan and others as he remained steadfast to his commitment to FSU. However, as the major Power 5 schools slowly came to terms with the fact that this corner wasn’t for turning, Deion Sanders had other ideas. Three months later, he convinced Hunter to visit the JSU campus for a home game against Alcorn State. In and of itself, it was a huge deal to get the nation’s best high school player through the door of an FCS school. But many cynics saw it as tokenism, a tool to aid Sanders’ recruitment drive, and to give HBCUs some much-needed visibility.

In the ’60s and ‘70s, HBCUs were often the only option for black players to play college football because white schools in the south refused to have blacks on their teams. Yet they regularly sent players to the NFL — almost 90 between 1960 and the early 2000s, including Hall of Famers like Jackie Slater, Mel Blount, Art Shell and Walter Payton, who wasn’t recruited by SEC schools in large part because of the manner in which he celebrated his touchdowns in high school. But many HBCUs, faced with limited resources when up against Power 5 programmes and their enormous athletic budgets, failed to attract the same level of talent they once did. As a result, fewer HBCU players have been drafted in recent years — there was not a single player selected from an HBCU school in 2021, something Coach Prime vowed to change.

Starting with the number one player in America.

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At about the same time as Hunter’s coaches were preparing him for a small signing ceremony in which he’d proudly place a garnet-and-gold hat on his head, Sanders was appearing on the Unnecessary Roughness podcast, setting the stage for what was to play out over the next 16 hours. “Let me tell you guys this,” he said knowingly. “Signing Day is tomorrow. I’m telling you right now; you heard it from me. We’re going to shock the country.”

The following morning, cracks started to appear. Hunter failed to show up to Collins Hill, and, as the coaching staff tried unsuccessfully to track him down, panic began to set in at the Florida State football offices. They’d begun to hear chatter that the impossible was all of a sudden quite possible.

Not long after that, the media began to pick up on the same rumours. Wiltfong told CBS that he believed Hunter might be on the brink of stunning America and changing his mind. Minutes later, he added that Deion Sanders might be involved. As desperate Seminole coaches continued to try Hunter’s phone and the phones of the coaches at Collins Hill, they were informed of the decision. “I can’t recall a five-star prospect ever signing with an FCS program that was good-to-go academically,” says Gerry Hamilton, the senior national recruiting analyst for On3. “This is a huge, huge, huge win for Deion Sanders. Not much shocks you in this business after 20-plus years. But my jaw has been dropped.”

As the dust settled on the greatest recruiting story of all-time, Sanders addressed rumours that JSU had offered Hunter a huge Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deal to sign with the Tigers, backed by Barstool Sports, for whom Sanders is a media personality. “We didn’t pay him! We ain’t got no money!” he said. “I heard a million-and-a-half. That’s the biggest lie I ever heard. I wouldn’t pay my son a million-and-a-half on NIL. How am I gonna coach a guy making more than me?” (Sanders makes $300,000 a year). “You know what that is? That means we kicked your butt, we took what was ours, and now you gotta make up an excuse why. He never belonged to them, I don’t think I ‘took’ him from FSU.”

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Travis Hunter is a generational talent at cornerback, and he’ll line up for the Tigers opposite the number one JUCO CB in America, De’Jahn Warren, who Coach Prime flipped from Georgia just over a year ago in another major recruiting shock. There are no guarantees that he develops into the high first round NFL prospect many believe is inevitable, but learning from the greatest to ever do it, albeit at a significantly lower level of competition, won’t hurt his cause. However, it remains to be seen how long the pair stay at Jackson State, as some cynics have argued that in signing Hunter, Sanders is trying to get a leg up to the head coaches job in Tallahassee, and using his new signing as bait.

But, even if that happens, it won’t take away from the impact of the number one prospect in America shunning a Power 5 school to play at the FCS level for an HBCU. “I do think this is a game-changer,” said the former Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush to The Athletic. “This speaks to who Deion Sanders is. He’s one of the rare guys who transcends all age groups and genres, college or the NFL. People listen to him and believe him because he backs it up. I think this could really be the start of something.”