Inside The Huskies

Ex-Husky Running Back Cam Davis Will Stay in Big Ten, Join Minnesota

He'll play a seventh season of college football in Minneapolis in 2025.
Dan Raley|
Cam Davis gets loose a double-pass against Michigan that went for 37 yards.
Cam Davis gets loose a double-pass against Michigan that went for 37 yards. | Skylar Lin Visuals

Heading into his final game at Husky Stadium against UCLA, running back Cam Davis faked everyone out -- he acted like his career was coming to an end for him as a college football player following six seasons at the University of Washington.

He laughed and picked out a name when asked which graduating UW player was most likely to cry with everything coming to completion, choosing linebacker Alphonzo Tuputala. He talked about leaving with his No. 22 jersey as a keepsake.

Only this Husky team captain wasn't done, far from it. He'll play yet another college football season some 1,400 miles away from Seattle

On Sunday, the 6-foot, 212-pound Davis from Rancho Cucamonga, California, revealed he will join a fellow Big Ten program, Minnesota, though he won't face the Huskies because those schools aren't scheduled to meet next year.

In need of running back help, the Gophers will get a fairly reliable yet not necessarily shifty rusher who scored 13 touchdowns in the 2022 season alone largely while coming off the bench for Kalen DeBoer's team.

Davis missed all of 2023 after tearing up a knee in a fall camp scrimmage while running as the Huskies' No. 1 back and having surgery.

Cam Davis' favorite play at the UW was this somersault TD against Colorado in 2022.
Cam Davis' favorite play at the UW was this somersault TD against Colorado in 2022. | Skylar Lin Visuals

This past season, he backed up starter Jonah Coleman, then seemed to get passed by freshman running back Adam Mohammed for the No. 2 job. He didn't carry the ball in any of the last three games on the schedule.

He has career totals of 1,093 yards and 15 touchdowns rushing on 253 rushing attempts and 42 receptions.

Davis becomes the second Huskies player to transfer to Minnesota, making his move 70 years after highly regarded sophomore quarterback Bobby Cox left a 2-8 UW team in 1954 for the Gophers. The Montlake program would become involved in a slush fund scandal that paid players when it was deemed illegal and led to disbanding the Pacific Coast Conference. UW teammates told how Cox got a better deal at Minnesota.

Born in Olympia and coming to the Huskies from Walla Walla High School, Cox would end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1956 while leading Minnesota to a 6-1-2 season in which the Gophers upset No. 3 Michigan State 14-13 and No. 5 Michigan 20-7, this after opening the season with a 34-14 victory over the UW in Husky Stadium.

Cox would play briefly for the Boston Patriots in the AFL and also in the CFL before retiring to Minneapolis and running a travel agency. He died in 2003 from pancreatic cancer at age 69.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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