NEWNow you can listen to Pak Gazette articles!
Mendoza Manía has reached the NFL.
Fernando Mendoza, the projected No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft, brings one of football’s most unexpected stories to the pros.
Legendary football agent Leigh Steinberg, who has represented an NFL-record eight first-round draft picks, believes what sets Mendoza apart from other hyped prospects are his words.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON PakGazette.Com
“The way he relates to people,” Steinberg said was the most unique part of Mendoza, in an interview with Pak Gazette Digital.
“He seems to have a really nice touch when dealing with his teammates. He seems to be a natural leader. He interacts well in interviews. He interacts well in everything. And so the job of a franchise quarterback is to represent the franchise, and he becomes the most visible face of a franchise. And you know, he’s good-looking. He speaks well, and I think he’s kind of an ideal representative or spokesperson for the team.”
How did a kid from Florida who knew what was coming become a Heisman Trophy winner, a national champion and the NFL’s next big thing?
Mendoza’s grandparents fled communist Cuba
The reason Fernando Mendoza is in the United States and leaving his mark on soccer history is because of a bold decision his grandparents made decades ago.
After Fidel Castro took control of Cuba and installed a communist regime, Mendoza’s four grandparents fled the country and came to the United States.
“We all thought it was temporary,” Mendoza’s maternal grandfather, Alberto Espino, previously told the Washington Post of “There was no way the United States would allow a communist regime 90 miles away.”
But Castro’s reign endured, so Espino and the Mendozas remained in the United States and built their lives as Americans. That meant American sports.
Mendoza’s parents were star athletes.
His parents grew up in Miami, Florida as children of Cuban refugees.
Mendoza’s father, Fernando Mendoza Sr., was a rower at Brown University and a gold medalist at the 1987 World Junior Championships.
But Mendoza’s father also played football when he was younger and was a teammate of Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal at Christopher Columbus High School during the 1980s. Mendoza would defeat his father’s former teammate in this year’s CFP national championship.
Meanwhile, his mother, Elsa Mendoza, played tennis at the University of Miami.
When Mendoza was a child, his mother was diagnosed with a serious illness.
Mendoza was born in Boston in 2003 as the first of his parents’ three children, before his family moved back to Miami, Florida, where he would grow up.
But when Mendoza was just four years old, her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It is a chronic autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that can affect the brain and spinal cord. He has spent the last few years in a wheelchair.
Elsa Mendoza wrote about the experience in a 2015 letter to her children that was published in The Player’s Tribune.
“I was diagnosed about 18 years ago, but of course you never knew. You and Alberto were very young and I was fine… and above all I didn’t want you to worry. It felt like something impossible to attribute to you. To my sweet boys. And then I continued to do well until about 10 years ago, when we went skiing and I broke my ankle and knee,” she wrote.
“But even after that, I wasn’t ready to tell you, just that my leg hadn’t fully healed, which was why your mom was limping. It wasn’t until five years ago, when I contracted Covid, that things started to go downhill in a way that I couldn’t hide it anymore. It was during football season, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to travel. And the idea of you wondering if I’d support you less, because suddenly I wasn’t at your games? I hated that. So That’s when I knew we had to sit you and your brother down.”
He went on to recall, “How difficult the conversation ended up being. ‘Your mom has this degenerative disease… and while we don’t know how it will progress, it will start to affect us in various ways. But it won’t affect us in the ways that matter. We will have each other, we will love each other, and we will be there for each other. I promise.'”
He grew up Catholic and went to an elite Catholic school.
As a child, Mendoza picked mangoes from his grandparents’ garden and sold them door to door to his neighbors.
Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza looks to throw a pass during the school’s NFL pro day in Bloomington, Indiana, on April 1, 2026. (AJ Mast/AP Photo)
Not only did he embrace capitalism when he was young, but he also embraced Catholicism.
He later followed in his father’s footsteps and played football at Christopher Columbus High School, an elite private Catholic school for boys that charges $18,000 a year and has a football program.
As the team’s starting quarterback as a senior, he led his team to an 11-3 record and the 2021 FHSAA Class 8A state semifinals.
INDIANA FOOTBALL STAR AND HIS BROTHER TURN THEIR HOME BURGER INTO A BATTLE AGAINST MS
But it wasn’t enough to endear him to many college scouts.
A two-star recruit, Mendoza was ranked 2,149th in the country in his high school class. He did not receive a single FBS scholarship offer.
He went to Yale for Cal Berkeley
With limited offers outside of college, Mendoza nearly accepted a non-scholarship football and education spot in the Ivy League at Yale. But instead, he crossed the country to try his luck in California, Berkeley.
They didn’t give him the starting job on the first day; Instead, he redshirted, studied the game, and quietly earned his business degree from the prestigious Haas School of Business in just three years.
As a quarterback, he earned the starting job in 2023 and 2024, becoming Cal’s all-time leader in completion percentage (66.4%) and tying for seventh in 250-yard passing games.
California Golden Bears quarterback Fernando Mendoza is on the field after the game against the Arizona Wildcats at FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, California, on September 24, 2022. (Darren Yamashita/USA TODAY Sports)
But his college football career hadn’t even begun.
Indiana’s decision
In 2025, Mendoza made the decision to move to Indiana. What followed is considered one of the most improbable streaks in college football history.
He threw for 3,535 yards, 41 touchdowns and just 6 interceptions, completing over 72% of his passes, while adding seven rushing touchdowns and winning the Heisman Trophy.
“Very often it is not until the end of your [college] career that display exactly those qualities. So a lot of maturation happened,” Steinberg said of Mendoza’s rise over the last year. “There have been several players who were late bloomers… you’re taking them to the height of their arc, and they put it all together. “It takes time to read defenses and see the field.”
Then, when the playoffs began, he cemented his name in college football history. He threw eight touchdowns with just five incomplete passes in the opening playoff games against Alabama in the Rose Bowl and Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.
In the national championship game, played in his hometown of Miami against his hometown university’s Miami Hurricanes, he was named the CFP’s Offensive Player of the National Championship Game, making a crucial 12-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter to seal the title.
Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza holds the trophy after the College Football Playoff National Championship game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on January 19, 2026. (Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images)
Indiana became the first time in modern college football history to go a perfect 16-0 behind Mendoza’s leadership, justifying one of the best CFB quarterback seasons in history.
Now the real work begins
With the Las Vegas Raiders set to pick first in this year’s NFL Draft, Mendoza appears destined for Sin City.
Steinberg believes the union will work well in football and business.
“He’s a perfect pick for the Raiders because he’s someone they can build a franchise around. He appears to have the right leadership skills and motivational ability to lead a team. He’s got great character, he’s got physical size. He’s got great arm strength. He’s indicated several times that he can pick up the team in critical circumstances,” Steinberg said.
“As a marketing proposition, Las Vegas is the most popular sports city in the United States… It’s a good environment to be with fans and companies that support sponsorships and endorsements.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE Pak Gazette APP
Mendoza has already filed 12 trademark applications. These submissions include his name, “Fernando Mendoza”, “Mendoza”, “Flippin'” and “HE15MENDOZA”, intended to cover sports apparel and merchandising.
“By choosing 12 different areas, that pretty much covered the field. And that means no one can go ahead and create a distinctive Mendoza. [merchandise] without dealing with it,” Steinberg said.
