Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza was the star of the show on Saturday, winning the 2025 Heisman Trophy after leading the No. 1-ranked Hoosiers (13-0) to an undefeated season and first-round bye in the College Football Playoff.
An absolute force in the Big Ten this season, Mendoza beat out fellow quarterbacks Julian Sayin (Ohio State) and Diego Pavia (Vanderbilt), as well as Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love for the highly prestigious award.
Here are my four takeaways from the 2025 Heisman Trophy ceremony.
1. Ohio State WR Jeremiah Smith is getting robbed for being young
How long are we going to keep allowing the best player in college football to play without winning a major individual award? At least one more year, it appears.
Smith, the only wide receiver to receive enough Heisman votes to finish in the top 10 (sixth) this year, didn’t win the Biletnikoff Award for the best wideout in the sport. Now, for the second year in a row, Smith — the player who the NFL has been salivating over for the past two years and the one most aficionados in the sport, including me, believe is the best player in college football — has once again not been voted to be a finalist by the bloated and stodgy group of Heisman electors.
“Your readers might not remember Andre Johnson,” an NFL evaluator told me. “But both of them were big and they both were ridiculously athletic to be that big.”
“What if your guy, Adrian Peterson, played receiver?” a Power 4 player personnel director asked me. “To be that strong [and] that younger is what actually will get me out of my seat once I watched the movie.”
Smith is younger — only a sophomore. Historically, Heisman voters don’t like awarding younger gamers, and they don’t like to present the award to a participant greater than as soon as. If this was a participation award, that’d be simply superb, however it’s not. The award is for essentially the most excellent participant within the sport, and for 2 years that has been Smith, no matter whether or not he can legally toast himself with a glass of champagne.
In the lead as much as the Big Ten Championship Game, most dialog centered round dueling quarterbacks and 2025 Heisman finalists Mendoza and Sayin. However, it was clear to virtually everyone, together with Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti, that the perfect receiver within the nation was on the Buckeyes’ sideline. Smith is an absolute power.
“You cover him as well as you can and hope the ball is not placed well,” Cignetti mentioned. “He’s a great player — the greatest at that position that I’ve seen at that age. He’s a weapon.”
Smith, who only recently turned 20 final month, notched his second consecutive 1,000-yard receiving season, already has 4 extra catches this yr (80) than he had all of final yr (76) and completely scorched then-No. 2 Indiana within the Buckeyes’ 13-10 loss within the Big Ten title sport with eight catches for 144 yards.
“Look, they (Indiana) kept that dude (Smith) out of the end zone,” an NFL scout instructed me. (*4*)
If Smith doesn’t win the Heisman subsequent yr, that gained’t be information. If he does, it will be another reason NFL groups will probably be falling over themselves to pick out him. Isn’t a participant like that presupposed to be the Heisman winner?
2. Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza did it first and did it greatest
Until earlier this season, Indiana was the losingest program in FBS historical past, had not gained a convention title of any sort since 1967 or an outright one since 1945 and had by no means completed an everyday season undefeated or seen itself ranked No. 1 in any ballot — not to mention each credible school soccer rating in America, together with my very own prime 25.
His win, and his class in successful, is precisely what the perfect is to many — and he is a worthy ambassador for it. What’s extra? He may very well be the primary Heisman winner to win a nationwide title since former Alabama extensive receiver DeVonta Smith.
3. Jeremiyah Love can blame Notre Dame for not successful
It’s straightforward to overlook Love entered the Heisman contest in earnest after he made a 94-yard house-call in opposition to Boston College on Nov. 1. After crossing the objective line, he struck the Heisman pose. Two weeks earlier, he completely destroyed USC with 228 dashing yards on 24 rushes. And, even now, most folk have forgotten he wanted simply eight carries to document 108 yards — together with one rush for 98 yards — in opposition to Indiana within the first spherical of final yr’s CFP.
In a season the place he rushed for 1,372 yards (6.9 yards per clip), accounted for 1,652 yards from scrimmage, set the Notre Dame single-season document for all-purpose touchdowns (21) and led the Fighting Irish to a 10-2 season, his possibilities to win the Heisman Trophy had been outdone by Notre Dame being, effectively, Notre Dame.
Unlike some, the Fighting Irish didn’t push Love as an early-season Heisman candidate, nor did they transfer to attempt to invite nationwide media to have interaction in serving to inform the story of their greatest participant since Josh Adams and their first Heisman finalist since Manti Teʻo. That’s a advertising and marketing blunder for Notre Dame.
Every Fighting Irish participant loses the chance so as to add extra to their statistics — numbers most Heisman voters weigh closely — and the possibility to say a league championship as a result of Notre Dame is unbiased. However, this season the Fighting Irish took the unprecedented step of opting out of the postseason entirely as a result of they had been so disenchanted about being ignored of this yr’s 12-team CFP area.
For some, that is a step too far. Notre Dame believes it might probably — and will — function in contrast to every other main school soccer program, and this transfer to forgo a bowl sport has been met with derision from most followers and media exterior Indiana. I’ve little doubt that call didn’t assist Love in his pursuit to turn into the varsity’s first Heisman winner since Tim Brown in 1987.
4. Ohio State QB Julian Sayin and Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia fell a win quick
The Heisman is a superb award, however Heisman voters aren’t at all times nice about deciding on who ought to win it. Sayin and Pavia are two of the newest examples as to why. Generally, the award goes to the perfect participant on the perfect crew when there’s however one crew left on the Power 4 stage with an undefeated document. In years when that hasn’t been the case, the person efficiency of any participant wanted to frame on otherworldly. Unfortunately for Sayin and Pavia, that’s precisely what their single-season efforts would’ve been a number of years in the past.
Sayin, who set the single-season FBS document for completion share this yr that subsequently made him essentially the most correct passer in historical past, is proscribed by former Oregon signal-caller Bo Nix setting that mark in 2023. Nix completed no higher than third within the Heisman voting on a crew that was 11-2 when voting closed and out of the CFP. Heisman voters merely don’t worth unprecedented accuracy above successful.
Pavia put collectively the perfect all-purpose efficiency the game has seen since former LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels. He threw for 3,192 yards, rushed for 826 yards and accounted for 35 complete touchdowns with simply eight interceptions. Those numbers embrace two video games with greater than 500 yards of offense. By comparability, Daniels recorded greater than 3,800 passing yards, 1,100 dashing yards and 50 complete touchdowns.
Still, Pavia did what no different quarterback has in historical past. At Vanderbilt, a perennial doormat within the SEC, he led the Commodores to their first 10-win season in program historical past and first successful document in SEC competitors for the reason that league expanded in 1992. Measured in opposition to historical past, Pavia’s feat is reasonably wonderful, however not sufficient for Heisman voters.
RJ Young is a nationwide school soccer author and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him @RJ_Young.
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