{"id":752415,"date":"2026-07-09T11:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/752415\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T11:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:05:16","slug":"fernando-mendoza-named-big-ten-male-athlete-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/752415\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernando Mendoza named Big Ten male athlete of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Quarterback Fernando Mendoza has moved on to the NFL. But he has earned one more accolade for his accomplishments at the college level. <\/p>\n<p>Mendoza was named the 2025-2026 Big Ten Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year, the conference announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Mendoza won the CFP national championship with Indiana to cap last season, also winning the Heisman Trophy for his performance for the Hoosiers.<\/p>\n<p>He is the sixth student-athlete from Indiana to win the honor, the first since track and field\u2019s Derek Drouin in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Mendoza became only the fourth player in the common draft era \u2014 and the first from the Big Ten \u2014 to win the Heisman, win a national championship, and then go No. 1 overall in the same season. He joined Joe Burrow, Jameis Winston, and Cam Newton in accomplishing that feat.<\/p>\n<p>Mendoza\u2019s next challenge will be earning the Raiders\u2019 starting quarterback job. Mendoza and the rest of Las Vegas\u2019 rookies will report to training camp on July 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quarterback Fernando Mendoza has moved on to the NFL. But he has earned one more accolade for his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-752415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}