Fernando Mendoza won the 2025 Heisman Trophy on Saturday night ahead of Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia, Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love and Ohio State’s Julian Sayin.

Mendoza has led Indiana to a 13-0 record, the school’s first Big Ten title since 1967 and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff. Here are five of the plays that made him the school’s first Heisman winner.

13-yard TD to Omar Cooper Jr. against Indiana State

Look, we know that games against FCS teams are generally viewed as stat-padding opportunities for players at top schools. But what Mendoza did against Indiana State over the first and second quarters in Week 3 was incredibly impressive

This 13-yard throw to Omar Cooper Jr. was one of four touchdown passes Cooper caught in the 73-0 win over the Sycamores.

As Cooper was open all day — he had 10 catches for 207 yards and four touchdowns — Mendoza threw five times as many touchdowns as he did incompletions. Mendoza was 19-of-20 passing for 270 yards and five scores in the first half.

The game was so out of hand at halftime that Mendoza sat out the entire second half. His younger brother Alberto took over and threw a 58-yard score to Cooper as the Mendozas combined to throw seven touchdown passes in the rout.

11-yard TD pass to EJ Williams in blowout win over Illinois

It was hard to pick just one play from the Hoosiers’ dominant win over Illinois in Week 4. We went with a second-quarter toss to E.J. Williams, but you can pick any score from the highlight clip below.

Just like he did against Indiana State the week before, Mendoza again threw more touchdowns than incompletions. As Indiana beat Illinois 63-10 — and was ranked No. 19 at the time of the game while the Illini was No. 9 — Mendoza was 21-of-23 passing for 267 yards and five touchdowns.

Go-ahead TD pass against Iowa

The Hoosiers didn’t play in many close games during the 2025 season. And when they did, Mendoza came up big. With Indiana’s Week 5 game against Iowa tied 13-13 with less than two minutes to go, Mendoza hit Elijah Sarratt for a 49-yard TD that put the Hoosiers up by seven.

The game wouldn’t be remembered for that play, however. After Iowa turned the ball over on downs with 16 seconds to go, Indiana still needed to run out the clock as the Hawkeyes had timeouts left. With just seconds remaining when the ball was snapped on fourth down, Mendoza sprinted towards his own end zone for a game-ending safety to ensure that Indiana would win 20-15. After the game, Mendoza apologized for the safety affecting the point spread, but the Hoosiers closed as 8.5-point favorites.

Game-winning TD pass to Omar Cooper Jr. vs. Penn State

The drive Mendoza led to beat Penn State and keep Indiana’s undefeated season alive made him the frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy.

As Indiana trailed 24-20 with less than two minutes to go, the Hoosiers got the ball back at their own 20-yard line. On the first play of the drive, Mendoza took a sack for a seven-yard loss.

He immediately recovered. He found Omar Cooper Jr. for a 22-yard gain and a first down and the Hoosiers were soon inside the Penn State 30-yard line after a 29-yard catch by Riley Nowakowski. On the very next play, Charlie Becker made a fantastic catch for 17 more yards.

Three plays later, Mendoza found Cooper in the back of the end zone for one of the plays of the year. Mendoza put the ball where only Cooper could catch it and the wide receiver made an incredible catch while also getting his foot down in bounds with 36 seconds to go.

4th quarter pass to Charlie Becker vs. Ohio State

Mendoza’s stat line from the Hoosiers’ Big Ten title game win over Ohio State wasn’t close to being one of his best of the season. But he consistently made big throws when he needed to after a first-quarter interception. And few were bigger than when he found Charlie Becker late in the fourth quarter.

On third down with 2:36 to go, Mendoza had Becker in single coverage and placed the ball perfectly for a 33-yard gain and a first down. An incomplete pass in that situation would have given the Buckeyes the ball back with plenty of time for a game-tying field goal or even a go-ahead touchdown. Instead, with Ohio State down to just one timeout, the completion ran the clock down to the 2-minute warning. By the time Ohio State got the ball back, there were just 18 seconds left as Indiana easily held on for a 13-10 victory.

Fernando Mendoza is Indiana’s first Heisman Trophy winner.

The junior quarterback beat Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia, Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love and Ohio State QB Julian Sayin to win the 2025 Heisman on Saturday night. Mendoza won the award as Indiana went undefeated in the regular season, took down Ohio State in the Big Ten title game and is the No. 1 seed for the College Football Playoff.

"Standing here tonight, holding this bad boy, representing Indiana University still doesn't feel real," Mendoza said after winning the award. "If you told me as a kid in Miami, that I'd be here on stage holding this prestigious trophy, I probably would have laughed, cried like I'm doing now or both. Because this moment, it's an honor, it's bigger than me. It's a product of a family, team, community and a whole lot of people who believed in me long before anybody knew my name."

Mendoza then ended his Heisman speech by noting that he wasn't the most prized recruit coming out of high school and said that he almost quit football during his first season in the fourth grade. 

"I want every kid out there who feels overlooked, underestimated to know I was you," Mendoza said. "I was that kid too. I was in your shoes. The truth is, you don't need the most stars, hype, or rankings. You just need discipline, heart and people who believe in you. And you need to believe in your own abilities. I hope this moment shows you that chasing your dreams are worth it, no matter how big or impossible they seem."

Mendoza finished with a voting tally of 2,362 total points, with 643 first-place votes. Pavia was second with 1,435 points and 189 first-place votes. Jeremiyah Love finished third with 719 points and Sayin was fourth with 432 points.

The Cal transfer is 226-of-316 passing for 2,980 yards and 33 touchdowns with just six interceptions. Mendoza has thrown the most touchdown passes of any player in college football and ranks second in total touchdowns behind South Florida’s Byrum Brown. Mendoza has the second-best pass efficiency rating in the country (181.4) behind Sayin at 182.1 and he is also one of just 10 quarterbacks who have completed over 70% of their passes this season.

Mendoza is the fourth straight Heisman winner who transferred schools during his college career and the second in that span to win the Heisman in his first year at his school. His win also breaks an odd drought for the Big Ten and a Heisman pattern that dated back to the award's inception in 1935. 

In addition to being Indiana’s first Heisman winner over 127 seasons of football dating back to 1899, he’s the first Big Ten player to win the Heisman since Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith. And Mendoza is the first quarterback to win the Heisman in a year that ends with a "5." Over the past nine decades — starting with Jay Berwanger's inaugural Heisman win in 1935 — a running back has always won the award in a "5" year. In 2015, Alabama RB Derrick Henry won the Heisman. Twenty years ago, USC RB Reggie Bush took home the award.

Before coming to Indiana, Mendoza played two seasons at Cal and was one of the more efficient passers in the country in 2024 even if the Bears went just 6-7. Across 11 games, he completed 69% of his passes and threw for over 3,000 yards.

As Mendoza was doing that, more than halfway across the country Indiana was in the midst of its best season ever under coach Curt Cignetti. The Hoosiers went 11-1 in the regular season under coach Curt Cignetti before losing to Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoff. It was the first time Indiana had ever won more than nine games in a single season and just the third time ever that the Hoosiers finished the season in the top 10 of the AP Top 25.

And Indiana is even better in 2025.

With younger brother Alberto already on the Indiana roster, Mendoza transferred from Cal after the season when Kurtis Rourke, Indiana’s stellar QB in 2024, was out of eligibility. After a slow start to the season — Mendoza completed 18-of-31 passes for 193 yards and no touchdowns in a 13-point win over Old Dominion — he started putting up cartoonish stat lines while sitting out a lot of fourth-quarter football.

Against FCS Indiana State in Week 3, Mendoza threw five touchdowns and had just one incompletion. The next week against Illinois, Mendoza again had more TD passes than incompletions as he was 21-of-23 passing for 267 yards and five scores.

Overall, Mendoza had four games in 2025 where he had as many or more touchdowns than he had incompletions. He also had just three games here he completed less than 63% of his passes and didn’t have a single game with multiple interceptions.

Before the Big Ten title game win over Ohio State, Mendoza’s signature moment came on the road at Penn State. After Indiana forced a Penn State punt with 1:51 to go and trailing 24-20, Mendoza led the Hoosiers on a 10-play, 80-yard drive that ended on an incredible throw to Omar Cooper Jr. as he made an even better catch.

The TD kept Indiana’s undefeated season alive as the Hoosiers won 27-24. From there, they beat Wisconsin and Purdue by a combined score of 87-10 before their slugfest 13-10 win over the Buckeyes a week ago.

LaNorris Sellers will be back for a fourth season at South Carolina.

The preseason first-team all-SEC quarterback is set to come back in 2026 according tomultiple reports. Sellers was seen as a potential top-10 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft before the season, but South Carolina underachieved in 2025.

The Gamecocks went 4-8 as the offensive line struggled against an extremely tough schedule. Sellers was 178-of-293 passing for 2,437 yards and just 13 TDs with eight interceptions across 12 games. Thanks to sacks, he also rushed for just 270 yards and five touchdowns.

A year ago, Sellers was the breakout star of the SEC. In 2024, he was 196-of-299 passing for 2,534 yards and 18 TDs with seven interceptions. Thirteen of those touchdowns came over South Carolina’s last six games of the season.

He also rushed for 674 yards and seven scores. He rushed 16 times for 166 yards in the Gamecocks’ upset of Clemson to end the season. That was South Carolina’s sixth win in a row before the Gamecocks lost to Illinois in the Citrus Bowl.

The 2024 USC offense was coordinated by Dowell Loggains and the team’s success helped lead to Loggains getting the head coaching job at Appalachian State. Coach Shane Beamer promoted Mike Shula to replace Loggains and Shula didn’t even last the entire season.

Shula was fired nine games into the season as South Carolina was 3-6. Earlier this week, the school announced that longtime college football assistant Kendal Briles would be the team’s offensive coordinator and former Penn State running backs coach Stan Drayton would be the assistant head coach for offense and also the team’s running backs coach.

Briles, the son of former Baylor coach Art Briles, has coached at five different schools since his dad was fired in 2016. He’s been the offensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic, Houston, Florida State and Arkansas before spending the last three seasons at TCU.