University of Colorado wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter revealed that his fiancée, Leanna Lenee, had gotten drunk and cried herself to sleep after being the subject of harsh online criticism from his fans after winning the Heisman Trophy over the weekend.
Hunter became the second Colorado player in history to win the award and the first two-way player to do so since Charles Woodson in 1997.
But Lenee generated plenty of headlines herself – from failing to stand up after he won the award until Hunter’s coach Deion Sanders tapped her on the back, to seemingly being upset that Hunter was taking photos with female fans at a planned event.
Hunter was streaming on Twitch on Sunday and revealed what Lenee had been going through, defended her, and asked those with particularly harsh views of her to stop.
‘She’s still sleeping, she’s slumped,’ the Heisman winner shared on the stream. ‘You know when you’re hurt but you just cry yourself to sleep and you just be gone? She drunk [sic], like, an OD amount tonight for no reason.’
Travis Hunter says his fiancee, Leanna Lenee, drunkenly cried herself to sleep after criticism
Hunter defended his girlfriend on a Twitch stream, telling trolls to ease off of her
‘You ain’t never had no girl, so why are y’all talking about me?’ the wide receiver added. ‘Find something else to talk about … Go talk about your girl. Go find a girl. Go find a life. Stop worrying about what I got going on. I know what I got.’
He said that Lenee has been with him for five years and that people are only ‘just now starting’ to talk about him. Hunter then told ‘clickbait’ websites and pages to stop creating false narratives about his relationship.
‘Clickbait pages stop, y’all better stop I’m telling y’all. Something bad is gonna happen to y’all [if you] keep doing that. Y’all better stop that. I ain’t playing,’ he said.
‘Y’all hate on me then you go hate on my girl,’ the two-way star continued. ‘I feel the same thing that she feels. We’re inseparable. We’re with each other. If she’s hurting, I’m hurting.’
Fans have been especially hyper-focused on Lenee and Hunter’s relationship in the past few weeks.
In the aftermath of Colorado’s final home game of the season, a 52-0 beatdown of Oklahoma State,the couple appeared to get into some sort of argument – with Lenee rebuffing Hunter’s attempt to plant a kiss on her cheek.
Earlier this season, Lenee and Hunter appeared to get into an argument after a game
Lenee (L) seemed upset when Hunter took photos with female fans of his over the weekend
Hunter and Lenee are set to be married next year and have been dating for some time
It led Hunter to set the record straight: ‘There’s a lot of stuff that could be happening in the stands, people don’t understand that,’ Hunter said on ‘The Pivot Podcast’.
‘She might look irritated towards me, but at the same time, there’s a lot of stuff she deal with during the game. There’s a lot of stuff people don’t see off the camera.’
‘I just let people talk,’ Hunter continued. ‘Me, I’m a big troller so I just troll the internet. I really don’t care what they think or what they say about us so, I just go on there and troll. They talk about her, I post her to make them even more mad than they already are so they try to find something to hate, try to find something to break up on our relationship but ain’t nothing there, ain’t nothing you can find cause I love my woman.’
‘She’s my closest to everything, she helped me with everything. It’s kind of hard sometimes but she’s always there.’
Hunter and Lenee have their wedding planned for next year. In his acceptance speech, he thanked Lenee and his mother – in that order, which sent social media into a frenzy of anger.
Hunter won the Heisman Trophy by the narrowest margin since 2009 – just barely beating out Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty for the honor. He became the second Colorado player to take home the award, joining the late Rashaan Salaam – who won it in 1994.
No purely defensive player has ever won the award. The closest a defense-only player has ever come to winning the Heisman was Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o in 2012, who finished runner-up to Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manzeil.