NEW YORK — Rashaan Salaam, the Colorado star who famously did not want to win the Heisman, suddenly found the giant, 45-pound bronze trophy sitting next to him — under a big, blue blanket — in first class on a United flight back to Denver in December 1994.

The Buffaloes’ running back had just become the first player in program history to win the most prestigious award in college football. CU two-way star Travis Hunter is one of four finalists on hand for the Heisman Trophy ceremony Saturday, hoping to join Salaam. 

Over the previous few months, Salaam must’ve done one interviews with news outlets across the country. In every one of them, he wanted to talk about anything but himself.

The late Salaam, whose death in 2016 was ruled a suicide, loved his offensive line.

Shoot, everyone on that ‘94 Buffs team did. Kordell Stewart and Michael Westbrook still mention each lineman by name — Tony Berti, Heath Irwin, Bryan Stoltenberg, Chris Naeole, Derek West, even tight end Christian Fauria — every time you ask about Salaam.

When the plane landed back on the Front Range after the weekend in New York, Salaam had a surprise waiting for him. It was a different era of air travel and security wasn’t as strict, so waiting for CU’s Heisman winner at the bottom of the jetway — just as he stepped off the plane — was Salaam’s entire offensive line.

“I thought he was going to cry,” David Plati, the longtime CU sports information director, told The Denver Gazette. “But that’s how much Rashaan loved his offensive line and surely, the offensive line loved him.”

In that moment, it was all worth it.

While that 1994 Heisman victory stuck with Salaam for the rest of his life, he was forever a somewhat-unlikely member of college football’s most elite group of players.

Entering his record-setting season, Salaam was on no one’s radar. He had rushed for a modest 1,002 yards and nine touchdowns across his first two seasons in Boulder.

In fact, after the “Miracle at Michigan” Plati was told by many he should be starting the Heisman campaign… for Stewart. But to Plati, he had three Heisman candidates on his hands — Salaam, Stewart and Westbrook — after all three of them starred at the Big House.

“I can’t break these guys up now,” Plati recalls thinking.

Everything took care of itself a week later.

On a scorching hot October day, No. 5 Colorado faced No. 16 Texas in Austin. Despite needing two IVs at halftime, Salaam ran for 317 yards and added another 45 receiving yards for a program-record 362 all-purpose yards.

That was the moment everyone knew.

“Rashaan was a monster,” Stewart told The Denver Gazette. “He just let it be known around the world — not with his conversation, but with his work ethic — that he was the best guy to ever do it.”

But he was still missing an iconic Heisman moment.

Even though the Buffs’ national championship hopes were dashed in a No. 2-vs.-No. 3 matchup against Nebraska in Lincoln, Salaam was still putting up big numbers on a weekly basis as he approached the rare air that is the 2,000-yard rushing mark.

In the 11th game — on Nov. 19th against Iowa State — Salaam took care of both.

With CU leading 27-13 early in the fourth quarter, Salaam was 13 yards shy of 2,000. He took a handoff from Stewart, broke free to the right and raced down the sideline for a 67-yard touchdown as 10,000 golden placards that read “2,000” — an idea from coach Bill McCartney — went up in the air from the Folsom Field crowd.

When Salaam reached the end zone, Westbrook got to him first.

“It was always so funny because I would always sprint to him when he scored a touchdown,” Westbrook told The Denver Gazette. “It wasn’t as if I was trying to be on the film when he rushed the 2,000 yards, it was just that we were like brothers. It was just one of those things where he scored a touchdown and I’m running and the next thing I know I look up, everybody’s holding up the (signs) and I’m like, ‘Oh, he did it.’ And so I grab him and drag him back down to the ground and start slapping him up and we were so proud. It was just one of the proudest moments of all time.

“We knew that was it. He was gonna win the Heisman.”

Stewart had a different perspective as he soaked in the scene, watching from behind as Salaam raced toward the end zone. But the feeling from that moment will never be forgotten.

“It was just crazy. I didn’t know how to add it up,” Stewart said. “I just knew he was doing it. To see the offensive linemen go down there and hoist him up in there and seeing the fans going crazy, it was a heartfelt moment.

“I didn’t get in the middle of it. I just sat back and watched it and I was like, ‘Man, look at this.’”

As Plati said, the late Larry Zimmer summed it up best on the Buffs’ radio broadcast.

“What a golden moment,” Zimmer said.