Indiana football officially launched its Heisman Trophy campaign for star quarterback Fernando Mendoza on Monday.
Featuring the hashtag #HeisMendoza, which started as a chant from IU’s student section during the Oct. 18 win against Michigan State, IU’s official football LinkedIn account (a Mendoza favorite) posted a 94-second video to social media highlighting Mendoza’s achievements on the field this season, as well as his profile off it.
Mendoza’s 299-yard, three-touchdown performance Saturday against Wisconsin edged Indiana closer to the Big Ten championship game, and it also pushed him into position as the odds on favorite for the Heisman for the first time this season.
A vote for Mendoza is a vote for both his numbers and his moments. He leads the Power Four in total touchdowns, with close to 3,000 total yards, and he captained game-winning drives at Iowa, Oregon and Penn State. NFL scouts consider him among the best quarterback prospects in the forthcoming draft, if not the best.
The Hoosiers QB joined ESPN’s ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ on Monday, first acknowledging the host’s love for all things Indiana. ‘Mr. McAfee, I know your wife Mrs. McAfee is a Hoosier, so shout out to her,’ Mendoza opened with as any good candidate would.
Here are some of the highlights from Mendoza’s chat with the former Indianapolis Colts punter:
How Curt Cignetti convinced Fernando Mendoza to come to Indiana
“Indiana and coach Cignetti really sold me on becoming the best Fernando Mendoza possible, and also having my little brother here, Alberto Mendoza, I was able to get the good, the bad, the ugly of the situation. The transfer portal nowadays is like speed dating, and there was a couple of other blue-bloods in the mix, but the way I saw it develop and coach Cignetti really selling me on, ‘I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what’s going to happen with this season, but I promise you if you come to my school instead of the other schools, you’re going to be the best Fernando Mendoza quarterback that you can become.’ And at that point I was sold, I was like, ‘Let’s go, ready to be a Hoosier.’”
Fernando Mendoza’s QB idol is not so popular in Indiana
“There’s a ton of quarterbacks, past, present and even in the future in college, I look at and watch their film. Past, I would say Tom Brady. That’s my guy. Grew up watching him. He’s my football idol. My parents are my character model and idol, but Tom Brady is my football idol.’
On Omar Cooper Jr.’s ‘catch of the year’ vs Penn State
“Catch of the year. That guy literally saved us the game. What a fantastic catch, what a fantastic play. For sure the best catch this season. And when we first stepped out on the field, you hear Mo Bamba rocking, it feels, you feel the stadium’s pulse. Everyone says Beaver Stadium is loud, we really felt it on the field. And overcoming the sack on the first play (of the final drive), everybody bouncing back, great resilience throughout the drive, great protection by the O-line, great catches by all the receivers, tight ends, and then we have the catch of the year at the end.
‘I know Omar, he played basketball, he’s from Indiana, so he has that basketball background, I just tried to put it up there, so he could either get an alley-oop dunk or a rebound, and he did it. At first, I thought, because usually you see the back foot always go down first, and then the foot closer, but he somehow levitated his foot, and had this imaginary cushion, which I still believe is God, all glory to God, and then the other foot tapped, not even on the white blade, tapped the little grass, and we have our offensive captain Pat Coogan after because everyone is going crazy, just pointing at the spot, telling the ref, ‘He’s in! He’s in!’ I thought we had to go back out for fourth down, once I saw the replay and coach Cignetti wail his arms in the air, I was like, ‘Let’s ****** go.’ Excuse my language.”
How Curt Cigentti keeps Indiana football motivated
“Coach Cignetti coming from the (Nick) Saban tree, he really uses and coins the term ‘rat poison.’ He really makes sure to never keep you complacent and always keep you hungry. Coach Cig is coaching us up at practice. If we’ve had a sloppy practice on the offensive side, you’ll hear about it. You’ll hear about it and I think he does a great job motivating us, not only when we’re up, but also when we’re down. For example, during the Oregon game, I threw a pick-six to tie the game, and at Oregon, at that time they’re No. 3 in the nation, he came up to me and he said, ‘Let’s have some fun.’ You’re like, you’re good. At that point, it made myself feel in the present moment and come to a little Zen moment, and I was able to lead the game-winning drive and score a touchdown. So coach Cignetti, not only has, you know, the hard-ass mentality that he’s always going to keep us hungry and keep us away from the rat poison, but he also knows how to motivate us. For example, Wisconsin at halftime.”
Fernando Mendoza’s secret: Daily mass and bible study
“On game day, I always make sure to do my daily meditation, 10 minutes to zone in, and I was make sure to watch daily mass on the day of the game. And leadership style, we have so many great leaders on the team across the team. So when I first got here to Bloomington, I’m not only able to learn from great leadership from coaches like coach Cignetti, coach (Mike) Shanahan, coach (Chandler) Whitmer also from a great team last year, we have All-American linebacker Aiden Fisher, I can go on and on about all these different guys and what great leaders they are. So to be able to pick and choose, and to see what attributes I can take to help elevate the leadership on our team, which already has a fantastic culture that I could help us take us to that next, next level.
‘And I would say a couple other things are quirky, what I’ll say about being able to be one of the guys, we try to go out to dinner every single week on Thursdays. We always do team bible study, and so having really that camaraderie with the guys instead of just being teammates, it’s different, because you really are brothers so whenever, so let’s say when I set (Charlie) Becker up on a pass and he gets blown up, it’s not like, ‘Man, I should have not thrown that and got him blown up,’ it’s like ‘That’s my boy, that’s my dawg,’ I don’t want to get him blown up, ‘that’s my brother.’ So I think that camaraderie that we have within the locker room and leadership, not just from the quarterback front but from all fronts is overwhelming and has really helped this team this season.”