3 Ways Fernando Mendoza Has Shown He’s a Heisman Winner

Fernando Mendoza is going to lead No. 2 Indiana into the Big Ten championship game on Saturday, and he’ll do it without having lost a single game in crimson and cream.

If he leads the Hoosiers past No. 1 Ohio State, it will be the biggest win in college football this season and the biggest win in IU school history. Mendoza will also be a Heisman Trophy finalist and could be a first-round selection in the 2026 NFL Draft.

He’s been prepared to and shown himself capable of completing each one of those things in three ways.

1. He emulates the GOAT

Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza wants to be just like Tom Brady. It’s not a sentence he’ll say out loud as much as you can hear him thinking through each of his answers with a nod to the football GOAT.

It's not that Mendoza grew up in South Florida, was slated to play college ball at Yale before Cal showed up with an offer and ended up in the Big Ten by way of Indiana — a doormat in the league until IU coach Curt Cignetti showed up. But what matters to Mendoza is how Brady prepared, displaying the virtues his family taught him — holding himself to a standard on the football field and even more glowingly off of it.

If you listen to Mendoza closely, his anecdotes often find their way to something Brady said or something Brady has done.

"There's an interview that I saw where Tom Brady said that all the greats always have someone with unwavering love and confidence in that person," Mendoza said, "whether it's a parent, whether it's an uncle, whether it's a brother or sister. I think that person, for myself, is my mom. I’m not saying by any means, I'm a great or anything like that. But I would say that she's been a huge part of my success."

2. His mother knew before anyone else

Elsa Mendoza, a former Miami (Fla.) tennis player with an MBA from the university, battles multiple sclerosis. She’s also the person who has seen her oldest son's future so clearly as to not be surprised that he is leading undefeated No. 2 Indiana into its first conference championship game.

Despite never losing a game as the starting quarterback at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, Mendoza struggled for offers to even play college football. His mother never believed anything other than a future where her son would play big-time college football.

"I really wanted to play college football," he told me. "I think I'm better than a lot of these kids. But I'm getting no offers."

"Oh, don't worry," his mother told him. "Your first offer is gonna come."

"And then it was Yale," Mendoza said. "That was one of the best days of my life."

But Elsa saw it as simply part of the process of Mendoza getting to where she envisioned. "You’re gonna get a Power 4 offer," she told him.

"Mommy," he said, "FIU isn’t even offering me. A Power 4 offer? How am I going to get a Power 4 offer if FIU isn’t even offering me?"

Mama stood on what she said.

"And then I got my first D-I offer, and I ended up at Cal, and I was just grateful to have a D-I offer."

Then the game sped up. Mendoza stood on the sidelines. He told his mother he didn’t even know if he was good enough to play there anymore. And, once more, Mama didn’t budge.

"You're gonna do great," Elsa told her son.

3. He’s one of the best football players in the country at a program that has clung to being a basketball school for more than 100 years

In 2024 at Cal, Mendoza threw for more than 3,000 yards with 16 passing touchdowns and six interceptions while completing more than 68% of his passes. Through 12 games at Indiana, no other quarterback in the nation has thrown more touchdown passes than his 32. He has completed 72% of his passes and thrown more than 2,700 yards on just 293 pass attempts.

There are other players who have proven to be just as outstanding as Mendoza, and you’ll see those men invited to New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony this month.

But you won’t find one who has taken every step on the path his mother knew he would, has followed the playbook he saw Tom Brady carry throughout his career and has led IU football to heights that he thought were impossible when he was still just a senior in high school in 2022, begging for the opportunity to play college football.