Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty’s Heisman Trophy acceptance speech will wind up in the same place as Kamala Harris’ presidential election victory speech. 

Jeanty, a finalist for the award Saturday night, came up short to two-way Colorado star Travis Hunter in the voting. Jeanty had the best season of any Boise State running back in program history and one of the best in college football history. 

He thought so highly of his chances to win the award, he wrote and practiced an acceptance speech and even told the world he did so. 

“I practiced my speech last night to make sure I’m ready when I get up there,” Jeanty told reporters before the ceremony Saturday. 

But Hunter’s dominance this season on both offense as a wide receiver and defense as a defensive back was too much for Jeanty to overcome. 

Hunter received 552 first-place votes, beating out Jeanty’s 309. They were, by far, the top two finishers in the vote, and it was the closest vote since 2009.

HEISMAN HOPEFUL ASHTON JEANTY POINTS TO HIS FAITH AFTER PLAYOFF-BOUND BOISE STATE WINS MOUNTAIN WEST TITLE

Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty (2) breaks away from the arms of UNLV defensive lineman Tatuo Martinson (98) in the first half of the Mountain West championship game Dec. 6, 2024, in Boise, Idaho.  (AP Photo/Steve Conner)

As a wide receiver, Hunter had 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 total touchdowns. Hunter won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top wide receiver. As a corner, Hunter had 31 tackles, 11 pass deflections and four interceptions, anchoring Colorado’s defense.

Hunter also won the Bednarik Award as the nation’s best defensive player, becoming the first player ever to win both the Bednarik and Biletnikoff.

Boise State Broncos running back Ashton Jeanty is interviewed by Fox Sports reporter Allison Williams after a game against the UNLV Rebels at Albertsons Stadium Dec. 6, 2024. (Brian Losness/Imagn Images)

Jeanty was the first running back Heisman Trophy finalist since 2017 after an impressive season in which he led the country with 2,497 yards rushing and 29 touchdowns.

The running back helped lead Boise State to the No. 3 seed in the College Football Playoff, which includes a first-round bye. Boise State will play the winner of SMU and Penn State.

Hunter’s Colorado team fell short of the playoff, finishing at No. 23. Colorado will play BYU in the Alamo Bowl Dec. 28. 

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Too much talent. That was the story of the CIF Open Division state championship bowl game on Saturday night.

Santa Ana Mater Dei showed why it was a heavy favorite, mixing a bruising rushing attack with a precision aerial assault to overwhelm Concord De La Salle 37-15 and complete the “southern sweep” at Saddleback College.

Earlier in the day, Palos Verdes won the Division 2-A contest and Huntington Beach Edison won the Division 1-A game, setting the stage for a marquee matchup between North Coast Section and Southern Section champions.

The Monarchs’ dominant performance showed their program is in capable hands under first-year coach Raul Lara, who turned Long Beach Poly into a public school powerhouse in the early 2000s while piloting the Jackrabbits to five section titles in 13 seasons.

Senior quarterback Dash Beierly completed 18 of 27 passes for a season-high 355 yards and three touchdowns while fellow Washington commit Marcus Harris caught six passes for 92 yards. Oregon-bound Jordon Davison rushed 17 times for 107 yards as Mater Dei pulled away with two fourth-quarter scores.

Mater Dei was aggressive from the start. On its first offensive play, Beierly found Harris over the middle for a 25-yard gain and Davison ended the 80-yard, seven-play drive with a three-yard run.

Mater Dei needed one play to double its lead on its third possession as Beierly fired a pass from his own goal line in stride to slot receiver Gavin Honore for a 90-yard touchdown. The next time the Monarchs got the ball, Kayden Dixon-Wyatt leaped high in the air for a 31-yard grab at the Spartans’ two-yard line but a goal line stand kept the proud Spartans in the game. However, Toa Fa’avae was sacked in the end zone for a safety by linebackers Nasir Wyatt and Shaun Scott.

After Koen Parnell stretched out for a dazzling mid-air catch for 40 yards, Dixon-Wyatt scored on a 21-yard swing route to increase the margin to 23-0 with 48 seconds left in the first half.

Fa’avae capped an 11-play, 65-yard march that took nearly seven minutes off the clock with a one-yard sneak to pull the Spartans to within 23-7 on their first drive of the third quarter. After the defense forced a punt, Fa’avae scored on a 41-yard quarterback draw and Derrick Blanche added the two-point conversion run to make it an eight-point deficit going into the fourth quarter.

Mater Dei responded with a 92-yard, 16-play drive that ended on a 15-yard run up the middle by Davison to increase the Monarchs’ lead to 30-15 with 8:19 left. Beierly threw a 31-yard touchdown pass to tight end Mark Bowman to make it 37-15 three minutes later. Interceptions by Alabama-bound linebacker Abduall Sanders and defensive back Ace Leutele sealed the deal.

De La Salle once sat where Mater Dei is now — as King of the Hill in California — when stringing together a national-record 151 consecutive wins from 1992 to 2004. The biggest victory during that streak was a 29-15 triumph over Long Beach Poly (then coached by Lara) in a matchup between the top two ranked high school teams in the country.

De La Salle pulled out all the stops to make it competitive Saturday, even inviting back legendary coach Bob Ladouceur — the architect of the Spartans’ streak — to stand on the sideline for Saturday’s game. Not even his aura could make up for the difference in talent on the field.

Mater Dei defensive back Ace Leutele makes a one-handed interception against De La Salle in the fourth quarter Saturday in the CIF Open Division state championship bowl game at Saddleback College.

(Craig Weston)

Calpreps.com listed De La Salle as a 41-point underdog and the Spartans were trying to pull off the biggest upset since the inaugural Division I state bowl game in 2006 when they were undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation but lost 27-13 to Canyon Country Canyon at Home Depot Center in Carson.

De La Salle (12-1) was making its 17th state bowl appearance, more than any other school, and has won a record seven, but dropped to 7-10 overall and 6-6 in the Open Division since it debuted in 2008.

Mater Dei captured its fifth state bowl championship since 2017 — all in the Open Division — and tied Folsom for the second-most victories behind De La Salle. The Monarchs (13-0), who edged Trinity League rival St. John Bosco 31-24 two weeks ago for the Southern Section Division 1 title, achieved back-to-back state bowl wins for the second time, having done so in 2017-18.

All of the people involved in this Jimmy Butler business are prideful, and justifiably so.

Pat Riley has been on — either as a player, assistant coach, head coach or top executive — nine NBA championship teams. And teams of which he has been a part have made 19 NBA finals. There have been only 78 finals in league history. That means Riles’ teams have been in a quarter of ’em. Almost three decades after he came to Miami, his Heat organization remains, as he is, relentless and obsessed with winning, led by a coach in Erik Spoelstra whose tough love brand earns nothing but respect and accolades from players around the league.

Butler has earned everything he’s gotten in the NBA, coming from Tomball, Texas, to become one of the game’s great clutch players, a postseason force unlike most who have ever laced ’em up. To mix sports metaphors, Jimmy Butler rakes in the playoffs. And if the Heat, who seem to have stabilized themselves after a rough start, make another postseason, a healthy Jimmy Butler would likely rake, again.

But, the way things are headed, the player and the team seem destined to part ways. Maybe amicably, which is what mom and dad say when they go Splitsville, so as not to upset the kids. But divorced, nonetheless. Whether it comes during the season or next summer, with the 35-year-old Butler holding a player option at $52 million for the 2025-26 season, we seem to be moving toward that inevitability, with the backdrop of last season, when both sides seemed to be chafing one another, still fresh in the mind.

Unless … the Heat come to the table with the two-year, $113 million extension Butler has wanted for the last year. Which is not likely.

At the very least, the Heat are indeed seriously listening for the first time to trade offers for Butler, league sources said. Nothing has approached a serious offer yet, but even being willing to listen marks a change in where the team was when Butler almost willed them to a championship in 2023, before Miami was overwhelmed by Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets in five games.

But Miami’s sober about its current state.

In 2023, Miami was a Play-In team that got hot at just the right time. Last season, it was … a Play-In team, that got smoked by Boston in the first round, with Butler sidelined by a sprained knee. This season, the Heat seems to have found something with Butler and Haywood Highsmith flanking Bam Adebayo in the back of Miami’s defense. But no one thinks Miami is on Boston’s level right now. And the whole point of Patrick James Riley’s professional life is to compete for championships, not the eight seed.

So if moving Butler brings back players that give Miami more of a shot, the Heat will engage. That likely means taking back players, rather than a deal featuring a bunch of future picks. Riles doesn’t do rebuilds. (Plus, he’s going to be 80 in March.)

They’re not there yet. But, they’re listening.

Butler is listening, too. He hasn’t asked to be traded from Miami, but if he stays, he wants the max.

He took to heart Riley’s admonitions after the Boston series, when he called Butler out for an appearance on a podcast in which he said if he’d been healthy, Miami would have beaten either the Celtics or New York in a first-round series.

“If you’re not on the court playing against Boston, or on the court playing against the New York Knicks, you should keep your mouth shut, in your criticism of those teams,” Riley fired back.

So, Butler came to camp in even better shape than usual, and is averaging nearly 32 minutes per game, though he missed four games early in the season with ankle issues. He’s shooting 55 percent from the floor in 18 games, which would be a career best if it held up all season. He’s still drawing fouls, taking more than seven free throws per game. He believes he’s proving his worth on the court, and is setting himself up to play next season for big dollars. Could be Miami; could be elsewhere. It’s not that he’s ambivalent; all things being equal, he’d prefer to stay.

But … see above. And he does get that Miami has to find out what it could get for him, and that it could go either way.

Along those lines, don’t discount the possibility that Miami is not just trying to gauge the trade market for Butler, but also what it would cost to bring him back if/when he opts out.

No one other than Brooklyn would have the cap space to take Butler in via that route next summer. That’s not a likely destination for Butler, who wants to play for rings. So Miami’s play, if it wants to make a deal, would be the sign-and-trade route. Finding out what Butler’s market is now will also help the Heat determine whether to offer him, say, a free agent deal more like what the LA Clippers gave James Harden (two years, $70 million), rather than what the Philadelphia 76ers wound up giving Paul George (four years, $212 million).

Just how deep is a potential trade market for Butler? One could certainly form by the trade deadline as teams get more desperate to add a difference-maker for the stretch run. This is especially true out West, where Denver and Minnesota are flailing to regain their old form, whether because of injuries to key players (the Nuggets) or just a kind of malaise that has settled over the team (the Timberwolves). New Orleans, flat on its back at 5-21, certainly has to reassess its roster, and exactly whom it can put around Zion Williamson and Dejounte Murray going forward.

But the realities of the second apron, and the massive penalties it triggers for teams that exceed it, make a blockbuster deal for someone of Butler’s talent, age and price tag incredibly difficult to pull off.

Minnesota’s already gone blockbuster this year with the Karl-Anthony Towns trade, and is still trying to figure out how Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo fit best in the Wolves’ rotation. As our Sam Amick detailed Friday, the surging Rockets, heading to the NBA Cup semifinals this weekend in Las Vegas on the strength of an already-formidable defense, are a long shot to get into the Butler Sweepstakes.

Golden State has been linked to Butler, but Miami would have to think an Andrew Wiggins-based package, which would also likely have to include the now-out-for-the-season De’Anthony Melton, gets them closer to games in June than standing pat (no pun intended) with Jimmy Buckets. That’s a doubtful premise.

Dallas is turning the ball over too much right now to be comfortable, but the Mavericks are still a top-four team in the West, and are top 10 in defensive rating. They also have multiple alphas capable of taking over games offensively — Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving — with a third in Klay Thompson who’s no stranger to postseason heroics. So they don’t necessarily need another scorer, though they struggled mightily at times during the finals series with Boston last June to put the ball in the basket consistently. (And, as Spotrac’s Kevin Smith notes, acquiring Butler would require the Mavs to jump through considerable second-apron hoops to fill out their roster afterward, needing to send multiple players/contracts to the Heat just to make a Butler deal work.)

New Orleans wants to move Brandon Ingram, to be sure. But you wouldn’t trade for Butler if you weren’t going to keep him, which means the Pelicans would have to come correct with an extension. And that would make the Pels, whose four-year, $112 million extension for Trey Murphy III kicks in next year, really, really expensive. They aren’t interested in being really, really expensive.

Phoenix has been bandied as a potential destination, as well. And, sure, the Suns are in win-yesterday mode. Having Butler on the floor with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker would make Phoenix that much more formidable, and Mike Budenholzer certainly could figure out ways to employ Butler’s defensive chops to maximum impact at the other end.

But a trade between Miami and the Suns would have to involve Bradley Beal waiving his no-trade clause to facilitate a deal, allowing Phoenix to make a relatively clean swap with Miami for Butler. As Beal chose the Suns over the Heat in the first place in 2023, when the Wizards had the framework of a deal in place with Miami to send him there, it’s hard to see him now wanting to go the other way, even if the Eastern Conference is decidedly less treacherous to navigate than the Western Conference. Beal chose Phoenix over Miami, in part, because it was much closer to his wife’s extended family in California.

Sacramento is certainly underachieving, at .500 through 26 games and currently out of the Play-In round. But even if interested, the Kings would have to know that they could re-sign Butler next summer. With the Kings already at the first apron hard cap, going further to keep Butler, while De’Aaron Fox creeps ever closer to unrestricted free agency, would seem to be a non-starter.

Pride goeth before a fall, it says in Proverbs. The best solution for Jimmy Butler and Pat Riley and the Miami Heat might just be for everyone to swallow their collective pride, make a deal everyone can live with, and play it out on South Beach.

(Photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)