Fernando Mendoza’s remarkable rise from lightly recruited transfer to the face of college football reached its pinnacle Saturday night.
The Indiana quarterback won the 2025 Heisman Trophy, becoming the first Hoosier ever to claim the sport’s most prestigious individual award since its inception in 1935. Mendoza earned 2,362 points in the balloting, including 643 first-place votes, finishing well ahead of Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia (1,435 points), Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love (719), and Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin (432).
Mendoza, the leader of top-ranked Indiana, guided the Hoosiers to their first-ever No. 1 ranking and the top seed in the 12-team College Football Playoff. A redshirt junior and first-year starter after transferring from California, he threw for 2,980 yards and a national-best 33 touchdown passes while adding six rushing scores. Indiana enters the postseason as the last unbeaten team in major college football and will play in the CFP quarterfinal at the Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential on Jan. 1.
Mendoza’s impact was immediate and historic. He became only the second Heisman finalist in school history, joining 1989 runner-up Anthony Thompson, and the seventh Hoosier to finish in the top 10 of the voting. It also marked another first for the program: Indiana has now produced back-to-back top-10 finishers, after quarterback Kurtis Rourke placed ninth last season.
A Miami native who flew largely under the recruiting radar, Mendoza is the centerpiece of an Indiana offense that shattered program records for touchdowns and points, surpassing marks set during last season’s surprise CFP run. Quarterbacks have now won the Heisman in four of the past five seasons, with Colorado two-way star Travis Hunter breaking the streak last year.
Mendoza’s Heisman followed a week full of accolades. He was named The Associated Press Player of the Year earlier this week and collected the Maxwell Award and Davey O’Brien Award on Friday night.
Pavia finished second in the voting after a season for the ages at Vanderbilt. He threw for a school-record 3,192 yards and 27 touchdowns while leading the Commodores to their first 10-win season and six victories over Southeastern Conference opponents. Vanderbilt climbed as high as No. 9 in the AP Top 25 — its best ranking since 1937 — and Pavia became the first Heisman finalist in program history.
The graduate student from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has taken an unconventional path, going from unrecruited high school player to junior college, New Mexico State and then Vanderbilt via the transfer portal. Calling himself “a chip on the shoulder guy,” Pavia also played the season under a preliminary injunction as he challenges NCAA eligibility rules, arguing his junior college years should not count against his eligibility due to potential losses in name, image and likeness earnings. Vanderbilt will face Iowa in the ReliaQuest Bowl on Dec. 31.
Ohio State’s Sayin placed fourth after leading the Buckeyes to a No. 1 ranking for much of the season. The sophomore threw for 3,329 yards and tied for second nationally with 31 touchdown passes ahead of Ohio State’s CFP quarterfinal matchup in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic on Dec. 31. Sayin, who initially committed to Alabama before transferring following a coaching change, beat preseason No. 1 Texas in the opener and kept the Buckeyes atop the AP Top 25 for 13 straight weeks. He became just the second FBS quarterback in the past 40 years — joining West Virginia’s Geno Smith in 2012 — to record three games in a season with at least 300 passing yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a completion rate of 80% or better.
Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love rounded out the finalists after a brilliant junior season. The St. Louis native ranked fourth nationally with 1,372 rushing yards, fifth in per-game average (114.3) and third with 18 rushing touchdowns. Though the Fighting Irish missed the CFP and opted out of a bowl game, Love etched his name into school history as the first Notre Dame player with multiple touchdown runs of 90 yards or more, including a 98-yard run against Indiana in last season’s playoffs and a 94-yarder against Boston College this year. He won the Doak Walker Award on Friday night, becoming the latest standout running back to challenge the quarterback-dominated Heisman era — the last running back to win the trophy was Alabama’s Derrick Henry in 2015.
In the end, however, the night belonged to Mendoza. From transfer afterthought to Heisman winner, his season has redefined what’s possible in Bloomington — and cemented his place in college football history.
