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Mendoza Mania has arrived in the NFL.
Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft, brings one of the most unexpected stories in football to the pros.
Legendary football agent Leigh Steinberg, who has accounted for an NFL-record eight first-round draft picks, believes what sets Mendoza apart from other hot prospects is his words.
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“The way he communicates with people,” Steinberg said, was the most unique part of Mendoza, in an interview with PK Press Club Digital.
“He seems to have a really good rapport with his teammates. He seems to be a natural leader. He gets along well in interviews. He gets along 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’s well-spoken, and I think he’s sort of an ideal representative or spokesperson for the team.”
How did a kid from Florida who knew he was coming become a Heisman Trophy winner, national champion and the next big thing in the NFL?
Mendoza’s grandparents fled communist Cuba
The reason Fernando Mendoza is in the United States and left his mark in football history is because of a bold decision made by his grandparents decades ago.
After Fidel Castro took control of Cuba and installed a communist regime, Mendoza’s four grandparents fled the country and came to America.
“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 rule endured, so Espino and the Mendozas remained in the United States and built their lives as Americans. It meant American sports.
Mendoza’s parents were star athletes
Both of his parents grew up in Miami, Florida as the 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 teammates with Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal at Christopher Columbus High School in the 1980s. Mendoza would go on to defeat his father’s former teammate in that year’s CFP national championship game.
During this time, 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, the first of his parents’ three children, before his family moved back to Miami, Florida, where he would grow up.
But when Mendoza was only about four years old, his 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. She has spent the last few years in a wheelchair.
Elsa Mendoza wrote about her experience in a letter to her sons in 2015 and published in The Player’s Tribune.
“I was diagnosed about 18 years ago, but of course you never knew. You and Alberto were so young, and I was fine… and most importantly, I didn’t want you to worry. It was just impossible to put on you guys. On my sweet boys. And then I continued to be fine 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 quite ready to tell you – only that my leg hadn’t fully healed, which is why your mother was limping. It wasn’t until five years ago, when I contracted Covid, that things started to deteriorate to the point where there was no hiding it. It was during football season and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to travel. And the idea that you ask if I was less supportive of you, because suddenly I wasn’t in your shoes anymore? I hated it. So that’s when I knew we had to sit you and your brother down.
She went on to recall, “how difficult that conversation ended up being. ‘Your mother has this degenerative disease…and while we don’t know how it will progress, it will start to affect us in many ways. But it won’t affect us in the ways that matter. We will love each other and be there for each other. I promise.’
He grew up Catholic and attended an elite Catholic school.
As a young boy, 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, April 1, 2026. (AJ Mast/AP Photo)
Not only did he embrace capitalism in his youth, but he also embraced Catholicism.
He then followed in his father’s footsteps by playing football at Christopher Columbus High School, an elite all-boys private Catholic school with a football program.
As the team’s starting quarterback his senior year, he led his team to an 11-3 record and the 2021 FHSAA Class 8A state semifinals.
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But that wasn’t enough to win the affections of many college scouts.
As a two-star recruit, Mendoza was ranked as the nation’s No. 2,149 recruit in his high school class. He did not receive any FBS scholarship offers.
He left Yale for Cal Berkeley
With limited offers outside of college, Mendoza almost accepted a spot in the Ivy League and non-college football at Yale. But instead, he moved across the country to try his luck in California, in Berkeley.
He wasn’t given the starting job from day one; 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 7th in 250-yard passing games.
California Golden Bears quarterback Fernando Mendoza stands 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 really begun.
The Indiana decision
In 2025, Mendoza made the decision to transfer to Indiana. What followed is considered one of the most improbable sequences in college football history.
He threw for 3,535 yards, 41 touchdowns and only 6 interceptions, completing over 72% of his passes, while adding seven rushing touchdowns, and won the Heisman Trophy.
“It is very often only at the end of their [college] career that they show exactly these qualities. So there’s been a lot of maturation,” Steinberg said of Mendoza’s rise to prominence this past year. “There’s been a number of players that have been late bloomers…you put them at the top 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 incompletions 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 Miami Hurricanes, he was named the CFP National Championship Offensive Player of the Game, scoring a crucial 12-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter to seal the title.
Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza holds up 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, making the case for one of the greatest quarterback seasons in CFB.
Now the real work begins
With the Las Vegas Raiders expected to pick first in this year’s NFL Draft, Mendoza appears destined for Sin City.
Steinberg believes the deal will work well on a football and business level.
“He’s a perfect fit for the Raiders because he’s someone they can build a franchise around. He seems to have the leadership skills and motivational ability to lead a team. He has great character, he has great physical size. He has great arm strength. He has indicated multiple times that he can bring the team back in critical circumstances,” Steinberg said.
“In terms of marketing, Las Vegas is the most dynamic sports city in America…It’s a good environment to be around fans and businesses that support us for sponsorships and endorsements.”
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Mendoza has already filed 12 trademark applications. These filings include his name, “Fernando Mendoza”, “Mendoza”, “Flippin'” and “HE15MENDOZA”, aimed at covering sportswear and merchandising.
“By choosing 12 different zones, that pretty much covered the whole ground. And that means no one can go ahead and create a distinctive Mendoza. [merchandise] without having to deal with him,” Steinberg said.
