Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
First off, congratulations to Travis Hunter, the two-way player for Coach Deion “Prime” Sanders’ University of Colorado football team, for winning the Heisman Trophy, college football’s highest honor.
Hunter’s career in college football has been an interesting ride: he came out of high school as one of the nation’s highest-rated recruits (if not THE highest-rated) and chose to play for Coach Sanders at Jackson State University, a historically Black university, a move that was seen by some at the time as risky for somebody with such a bright future ahead of him. When Coach Prime took the head coaching job at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Hunter (along with Prime’s sons, Shedeur and Shilo) followed him and after a really rocky first year, had a much improved second season, finishing with a 9-3 record and a trip to the Alamo Bowl.
The feather in the cap for Hunter, Coach Prime and Colorado was Hunter winning the Heisman Trophy (after collecting a litany of Player of the Year awards for both his offensive and defensive play). Hunter is the second Colorado player to win the Heisman, after running back Rashaan Salaam in 1994.
After all of that success, you’d think the main story would be just how much of an NFL prospect he will be but the real story about Hunter centers on his fiancée, Leanna Lenee, who recently decided to defend herself amid a ton of social media commentary that, let’s be real, is all intended to make her seem like a spoiled, entitled golddigger. For the record, I don’t know this woman and never met her, but I have been maligned on social media before, though clearly not to this level. I have some inkling of the need to defend oneself but I also know that’s a fool’s errand. More on that later.
In a nearly eight-minute TikTok video, Lenee defended herself against comments she made about why she (essentially) left Hunter on read when he first shot his shot via her DMs. Her previous comments about him not being her type are now infamous, but she claims that she “did not mean attractiveness”; it’s because Hunter had a girlfriend whose name was in his social media bio at the time, so she waited until he was single because she’s “not a sidepiece.”
Is that true? Maybe, maybe not — but that’s their problem, not the world’s. Lenee also spoke about a few recent events that have garnered attention and criticism regarding her attitude at said events.
Again, I don’t know Ms. Lenee, but if I did, I would tell her that this is just the beginning — and she’s going to need to learn not to take the words of people who don’t know her, and probably never will, to heart. I watched the clip at the Adidas event that she now tries to explain away. In her explanation, those weren’t fans but employees and she was simply trying to see if Travis wanted her to stay or go with his family. That isn’t exactly what I (or countless folks on social media) saw.
You see, the problem with defending yourself is that it makes people look for the inconsistencies. In that nearly minute-long video, she and Hunter’s interaction doesn’t seem as simple as that and it does give a bit of “girlfriend being annoyed that famous boyfriend has things to do.” But I wasn’t there and maybe what it looks like isn’t what it was. Who knows what else happened? However, Lenee can’t try to explain away every single time she may or may not have been rightfully annoyed by something. She is going to end up in clips and she either needs to learn that she’s going to have to keep it cute or realize that she might end up as fodder for other people’s disdain and just deal with it. That’s her life now. And further, Travis Hunter has bigger fish to fry than having to defend his fiancée against attacks on her attitude. There is no point in trying to defend it all because it will become impossible.
Now that folks know their comments got to her, the commentary could very well become an avalanche. She and Travis, and presumably their families, know what their relationship is and know what happened in those various clips being shared on social media. That should be all that matters; they’re going to need to take some notes from other celebrity couples who have lived (or are living) that life already.
I realize that there’s this ridiculously misogynistic desire to protect a young successful Black man from any woman coming for his potentially astronomical riches (he’s already loaded, by the way), but nobody but he and his family can do that or know if that’s what’s happening. From my vantage point, this doesn’t feel that way to me at all. That’s also neither here nor there. Maybe she’s exactly what folks think and maybe she’s not who she’s being portrayed to be. It doesn’t matter at this point — a narrative has been put on her and there’s not much she can do to change what some people are always going to think. That’s the nature of the beast. As long as she and Travis are happy then they’re going to need to live their lives together, somewhat publicly and hopefully happily, and let the trolls do their jobs.
Katt Williams once said haters are going to hate you regardless. A hater is doing their job. Live your life. Wise words from a wise man.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
