ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 Indiana is headed to the national championship game for the first time in program history. For Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza, that means a chance to end a fairytale season in the place where his story first began.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a historic season for Indiana, and Mendoza is largely to credit. Indiana won its first Big Ten title since 1967, beat Ohio State<\/a> for the first time since 1988, earned the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff, won its first Rose Bowl, and in December, Mendoza became the program\u2019s first Heisman Trophy winner<\/a>.<\/p>\n After a five touchdown performance and 56-22 rout<\/a> of Oregon in the Peach Bowl<\/a>, there\u2019s now just one item left on the checklist for Mendoza and the Hoosiers \u2014 and that\u2019s beating Miami on its home turf in the championship game. <\/p>\n It will be a homecoming for the quarterback, who grew up in Miami and attended Christopher Columbus High School, roughly 30 minutes south of Hard Rock Stadium.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve actually not played in Hard Rock before, but I\u2019ve been to a lot of games there,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very full circle moment. If you open Google Maps and put my address to the University of Miami campus, it\u2019s under a mile away.\u201d <\/p>\n Mendoza said he often biked and walked over, played rec basketball and spent the offseason training on campus, but the Miami and Mendoza connections don\u2019t end there. Mendoza\u2019s dad was a high school teammate of with Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal.<\/p>\n The Heisman winner is familiar with the Hurricanes. He played for two years at California, including the program\u2019s inaugural season in the ACC in 2024, before transferring to Indiana in 2025. He faced his hometown team once, in October 2024, and threw for 285 yards, two touchdowns and an interception in a 39-38 loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n He\u2019s looking forward to a rematch.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did switch defensive coordinators and last year was a very different offensive scheme as well,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cIt was a tight game. Cam Ward, who ended up being the No. 1 overall pick. That game came down to the wire… We lost that one by one point. It was heartbreaking, so just looking for the opportunity to play them again.\u201d <\/p>\n Mendoza has performed well under bright lights, and the Peach Bowl was no exception. He finished the game completing 17 of 20 passes for 177 yards and five touchdowns. He added 28 rushing yards on six carries and had a passer rating of 241.8.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a>. AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 Indiana is headed to the national championship game for the first time in program history.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4075,7121,111,143,11450,1882,28,57,28625,3156,6795,53634,30587,7122,123,125,124,6762,53635,57410,110],"class_list":["post-113036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-ap-top-news","tag-cam-ward","tag-college-sports","tag-college-football","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-football","tag-in-state-wire","tag-indiana","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-indiana-hoosiers-football","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-mario-cristobal","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-oregon-ducks","tag-oregon-ducks-football","tag-peach-bowl-game","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}