You might disagree with the rest of this column, but I’ll promise you one thing. You won’t disagree with the time I put in to filling out a Heisman Trophy ballot.
My Saturdays aren’t spent traveling to various campuses, wherein my full attention is only on 1-2 games. Don’t get it twisted, though. Being at a game in-person is second to none, and I try to do that at least once during the regular season, as well as the SEC Championship and a bowl game.
But filling out a Heisman ballot, to me, means watching as much football as humanly possible during a given fall Saturday. YouTubeTV Multiview — when it isn’t involved in disputes with Disney — has made that responsibility much more manageable. Oh, Texas Tech is playing West Virginia? Throw it on the Multiview. Ah, Ohio State travels to Washington? Multiview. Ole Miss is hosting LSU? Multiview for the next 12 hours, please and thank you.
I try to watch as much football as I can so that I’m not relying on the opinions of others to help crown college football’s ultimate reward. In my unbiased opinion, the prestige of the Heisman tops any individual award in sports. It deserves people who approach it that way. My annual goal is to make sure I’m always one of those people.
I preface this annual column that way because again, there’s a good chance that you’ll disagree with how I filled out my ballot, and that’s totally fine. But any perceived disagreement won’t be from a lack of watching these guys on Saturdays.
So, here’s what my 2025 Heisman ballot looked like (we get 3 spots and we rank them 1-3):
I didn’t have Julian Sayin or Jeremiyah Love on my ballot
Why not?
Let’s start with Sayin, who has been every bit as advertised as a former 5-star recruit who left Alabama in the wake of the Nick Saban retirement and has blossomed into the next great Ohio State quarterback. Outside of a having a back like Love to hand the ball off to, I’m not sure how Sayin could have better surroundings to operate in. Jeremiah Smith is the best receiver in America, and there are plenty of fall Saturdays in which I think Carnell Tate is worthy of that title. Sayin has arguably the best defense in the sport, too, so short fields and second-half leads are something he benefits from.
Sayin is unbelievable under pressure — his 78.1% adjusted completion percentage on throws under pressure is No. 2 in the FBS — so it’s not as if he’s only seen clean pockets and open receivers. But I do look at how much he benefits from ideal surroundings, and how noticeably different it was for Sayin in that Rutgers game when he didn’t have those 2 elite receivers. If I think a guy is the 3rd-best player on his own offense, I can’t pick him to be 1 of the 3 best players in the sport.
As for Love, I’d probably argue that he’s the best running back in the sport. The eye test tells me that, and not just because he hurdles in-position tacklers more casually than I take out the trash. Love is a walking, talking highlight-reel play waiting to happen, which is why he tied for the FBS lead with 7 runs of 40+ yards. He’s awesome, and it would’ve been awesome to watch him in the Playoff again.
But ask yourself this — what did he definitively do better than any running back in America? He was No. 4 in FBS in rushing yards, which is hardly the only metric to evaluate elite running back play, but it’s not like he had some 1,800-yard season. The efficiency was exceptional at 6.9 yards/carry, but among Power Conference backs with at least 100 carries, that was No. 3. He was No. 2 among Power Conference backs in both rushing touchdowns (18) and yards after first contact (896). Love had 56 missed tackles forced, which is a solid number, but it was No. 8 among Power Conference backs and a reminder that he benefitted from an experienced offensive line. Sure, he added value as a pass-catcher, but that felt like more of an afterthought in the last 2 months of the season. He’s an exceptional player who didn’t quite warrant a top-3 spot for me.
Love and Sayin both had tremendous seasons, and it was perfectly fine that they got an invite to New York. I just would’ve rather seen Jacob Rodriguez there.
3. Jacob Rodriguez, Texas Tech LB
It ended up being 21 teams, 2 of which are in the Playoff.
Wait, I thought you asked the question, “How many teams forced fewer turnovers than Rodriguez did this season?”
It’s an absurd stat to think about. Forcing 11 turnovers (7 forced fumbles and 4 interceptions) is the type of thing that some All-Americans don’t do in an entire career. Yet Rodriguez did that for a Texas Tech team that won the Big 12 Championship for the first time ever, thanks in large part to a defense that’s No. 3 in the FBS in both scoring defense and yards/play allowed. There’s playmaking, and then there’s whatever Rodriguez was in the middle of the Red Raiders’ defense.
It’s not just the turnovers, either. He had 104 tackles and 10 tackles for loss, but more importantly, PFF had him tied for the Power Conference lead with 65 defensive stops. Rodriguez is omni-present, and not just because he also got a pair of rushing touchdowns on offense (he also had a bad interception when Joey McGuire got a little too cute). That’s remarkable production for someone who has been so dominant that he’s spent plenty of 4th quarters on the bench for a Texas Tech team that won all 12 of its games by at least 3 scores.
Yes, part of the appeal of Rodriguez is his story. You can’t watch one of his games without hearing about how he’s a former Virginia quarterback who walked on at Texas Tech, and then married a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. But even if you’ve got a little bit of fatigue from that weekly broadcast staple, he’s undoubtedly been the best defensive player in college football. It’s a shame that he didn’t get a chance to hear his story told another time in New York.
2. Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt QB
Hate Pavia’s swagger if you want, but don’t deny his place among college football royalty. It’s not just that he led Vanderbilt to its first 10-win season in program history; it’s how he did it. He might not have had the statistical profile that most Heisman finalists have in their first 2 months of the season, but you could make a case that he was the best player in America in November:
- 465.5 yards of offense/game (No. 1 in FBS)
- 373.5 passing yards/game (No. 1 in FBS)
- 24 20-yard passes (T-No. 1 in FBS)
- 10.8 yards/pass attempt (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
- 189.9 QB rating (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
- 9.1 yards/play (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
- 368 rushing yards (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
- 92 rushing yards/game (No. 1 among Power Conference QBs)
- 12 TD passes (T-No. 2 in FBS)
Pavia’s late-season rampage to New York included a 3-1 record, wherein he lit up the scoreboard against the likes of Texas, Auburn, Kentucky and Tennessee in Neyland Stadium. On the season, Pavia led the most efficient offense in America at 7.5 yards/play. Against conference foes, Vandy averaged 7.0 yards/play, which was easily the best mark among Power Conference teams (it was also half a yard better than any SEC team).
Besides being a king of efficiency with the most yards/game among Power Conference players (334.8 yards/game), Pavia turned into the grim reaper. He faced 9 Power Conference teams, and 6 of them eventually fired either a head coach or a coordinator. You could argue that Pavia broke teams and that Vandy’s victories didn’t age well enough to give the program its first ever Playoff berth. After all, the 2 losses came against the 2 highest-ranked teams on the schedule (Alabama and Texas). If there’s a separator between Pavia and Fernando Mendoza, that’s part of it. Mendoza has been that dude from start to finish this season and has shown up with every clutch play possible, whereas Pavia and the Vandy offense hit a tiny lull in October, albeit a month in which Vandy beat a pair of top-15 teams (at the time of the matchup).
There are plenty of years in which Pavia would’ve been No. 1 on my ballot, including 2024 and 2022. I won’t deny that. But unfortunately for him, Mendoza pulled off an equally improbable feat without any blemishes.
1. Fernando Mendoza, Indiana QB
As I sit here today, I’m still searching for any sort of knock against Mendoza. Should he have scored 40 points against the nation’s best defense? Is it his fault that trips to Iowa and Penn State were a grind and he didn’t win by 28? Should he have thrown for 20 more yards to get to 3,000 pre-Playoff passing yards? Was his defense too good and perhaps he benefited more than others? Did Indiana play-caller Mike Shanahan scheme too well and make life too easy on him?
Those are all questions, some of which are obviously more tongue-in-cheek than others. But what I kept coming back to was the only one that mattered — was Mendoza the best player in college football this year? My answer, after plenty of internal debate the last few weeks, was an emphatic “yes.”
Perhaps that reality sank in on that 3rd-down throw to help close out Ohio State for the program’s first outright Big Ten Championship since 1945. Maybe it won’t be remembered as quite the “Heisman moment” that the Omar Cooper touchdown pass at Penn State was, but it should come as no surprise that among FBS quarterbacks with 100 passes in the second half/overtime, Mendoza had the best quarterback rating at 199.98. The only Power Conference quarterback with a better mark in the last 10 years was fellow Heisman winner Jayden Daniels. That’s not an accident. It’s also not an accident that Mendoza led IU to wins away from home against the likes of Oregon and Ohio State, both of whom are a combined 23-0 in games not against the Hoosiers.
Curt Cignetti is the reason that Indiana has gone from being the program with the most losses in the history of the sport to earning consecutive Playoff berths, but Mendoza is the reason that IU got over the hump against elite competition to earn that No. 1 seed.
You can’t knock him. All you can say is that he was the best flippin’ player in America in 2025.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
