NEW YORK — There’s more than one connection to Colorado at this year’s Heisman Trophy ceremony than the obvious.

While Travis Hunter became just the fourth Buffaloes player to be named a finalist for the top individual trophy in college football, Miami quarterback Cam Ward also has a close relationship to the Sanders family.

Ward and CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders have shared the same trainer, Darrell Colbert, for years, working out together during the summer and communicating throughout their respective college careers — which both began at the FCS level.

“Our relationship is good,” Ward said Friday. “We both push each other. When we work out together in the offseason, it’s gonna be heated battles. We’re both competitors.”

They did square off, briefly, last season when the Buffs visited Ward and his former team, Washington State, but Sanders got hurt in the first half of the blowout win for Ward’s Cougars.

The duo are projected to be the two top quarterbacks taken in next year’s NFL draft, so that game in Pullman last November probably wasn’t the last time they faced off on the football field.

“I’m pretty sure one day we’ll get a rematch,” Ward said.

Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty happy to represent the Mountain West

Figuratively and literally, Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty is representing the little guy this weekend in New York.

The star running back, considered the biggest threat to Travis Hunter’s bid to win the Heisman, is the shortest of the four contenders and he’s the only player not from a Power 4 program. He’s the first Group of Five player to earn a trip to the Heisman ceremony since Northern Illinois’ Jordan Lynch in 2013. He’s the first Mountain West player to do so since fellow Boise State legend, quarterback Kellen Moore, went in 2010.

It’s something that’s not lost on him.

“It would mean a lot,” Jeanty said when asked about potentially winning the Heisman on Saturday night. “Not just for me and Boise but for the world as a whole, just (to) change everybody’s perspective. I think it’ll inspire a lot of people. No matter what school or place you come from, it doesn’t matter what odds are against you, if you want to accomplish something, you can do it.”

Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel has seen it all through 6-year career

Of the four Heisman finalists, Dillon Gabriel is the elder statesman in the room. While all but Jeanty have played for multiple schools, Gabriel’s invitation to New York is the culmination of a six-year journey in college football that has spanned three different schools and so many big games.

The Oregon quarterback is certainly one for sentimentality and said he plans to keep all of his jerseys and helmets from his lone season with the Ducks, which will continue into the College Football Playoff later this month.

“I think I still have my Pop Warner jersey from when I was a kid,” Gabriel said. “I think all the memories start to roll back in your mind when you have those items and it’ll all be priceless and things you can appreciate.”

As the old head in the room, it’s not much of a surprise that Gabriel was inundated Friday with questions about the current era of college football dominated by the transfer portal and NIL, something he’s witnessed evolve plenty from his freshman year at Central Florida in 2019.

“About the wildest world you can live in,” Gabriel said. “I think now because it’s so new it’s hard to grasp, but in 10, 20 years we’ll appreciate the beginning of it all and how we can create rules that make sense. For the most part, there’s a lot of good.”