Fernando Mendoza delivers emotional speech after winning 2025 Heisman Trophy
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Fernando Mendoza met Saturday night’s moment like he did every big moment during his magical 2025 season.
Indiana’s quarterback was the star of stars in New York City, becoming the first Heisman Trophy winner in Hoosiers history, and he delivered his acceptance speech with emotion and appreciation. Mendoza beat out another quarterback, Vanderbilt‘s Diego Pavia, to create his crowning moment to close a regular season when he led Indiana to a 13-0 record and a Big Ten title.
On New Year’s Day, Mendoza will quarterback the Hoosiers in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal. But that’s for then. Right now, he was immersed in his emotional moment on Saturday night, realizing the Indiana program history he had just made when giving his touching speech among the sport’s all-time elite.
“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,” Mendoza said early in his speech. “Because this moment is an honor, it’s bigger than me. It’s a product of a family, a team, a community and a whole lot of people who believed in me long before anybody knew my name.”
Here’s his speech in-full:
Mendoza’s numbers in 2025 were off the charts. He threw for 2,980 yards and ran for 240 more, torching Big Ten defenses while leading Indiana to its first outright conference championship since 1945. He had a stellar 71.5% completion percentage this fall, threw 33 touchdown passes and was intercepted just 6 times.
He not only ran for those 240 yards, he showed an ability to get in the end zone using his feet, too, running for 6 touchdowns in addition to all those TD passes.
The 2025 season, at least the regular season, belonged to Mendoza, who transferred to IU from faraway California and made the absolute most of it. On Friday night, Mendoza captured the Maxwell Award and the Davey O’Brien Award, too. And on Saturday night, he added the biggest college football award of all, with the memorable speech to go with it.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
