\n<\/p>\n
His brother, Diego, a true freshman quarterback at the New Mexico Military Institute, a public military junior college, wasn\u2019t even 18. He was perceived to be too small, too stocky, with an arm that didn\u2019t wow enough coaches to receive a single Division I offer out of Volcano Vista High in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n
Even then, before he won the starting quarterback position as a true freshman in 2020, before he turned heads at New Mexico State and in the last two years as one of the most dynamic playmaking quarterbacks in the country, leading a surging Vanderbilt<\/a>, Diego glanced at that photo every day when he woke up and every night when he went to sleep.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a picture of the Heisman Trophy,\u201d Javier said. \u201cHe\u2019s believed it was possible since then.\u201d<\/p>\n The current Heisman Trophy frontrunner plays a four-hour drive directly north of Vanderbilt\u2019s campus, in Nashville. Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza just led the Hoosiers to an undefeated regular season<\/a> and a berth in the Big Ten title game against Ohio State. For the first time, voting for the 2025 Heisman Trophy award, which since 2021 has had four finalists, opens Saturday evening and lasts 48 hours.<\/p>\n Mendoza will have one last game to impress voters. Pavia, fresh off the most decorated season in the history of Vanderbilt football, has made his case and is either even with or right on<\/a> Mendoza\u2019s heels in some mock polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n The two likely finalists share some similarities. Both were underrecruited prospects out of high school. Both have taken circuitous paths to stardom in college football. And both represent something bigger than the most celebrated trophy in the sport: representation.<\/p>\n College football has had just two Heisman Trophy winners of Latino or Hispanic descent in its history. Former Stanford quarterback Jim Plunkett, who is of Mexican-American heritage, won in 1970. Former Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, whose grandfather was born in Mexico, won in 2021.<\/p>\n Mendoza grew up in Miami and is of Cuban descent. Both sets of his grandparents were born and raised in Cuba before immigrating to America. Pavia is of Hispanic descent; his mom\u2019s side hails from Spain and his dad\u2019s from Mexico. According to the NCAA\u2019s demographic database, Latino and Hispanic players made up 3.3 percent of Division I football athletes in 2025. The 1,161 athletes of that descent have nearly doubled since the NCAA\u2019s database started in 2012.<\/p>\n Half of this year\u2019s Heisman finalists may come from historically underrepresented communities in college football.<\/p>\n That, family members said, will only help spur those in the next generation to believe they can one day stand in shotgun formation and chase lofty dreams of becoming a high-profile quarterback.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re blessed to see what Diego has done and inspired this younger generation,\u201d said Pavia\u2019s mother, Antoinette Padilla. \u201cThey all believe they have a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernando Mendoza Sr. grew up playing football in South Florida. He played with Miami head coach Mario Cristobal at Christopher Columbus High. Hispanic or Latino kids playing high school football in Miami isn\u2019t an earth-shattering development. There are plenty of players of that heritage who go on to play college football. But the quarterback position and all the hype, fame and acclaim that come with it changes the dynamic of how an individual is seen.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it speaks to the attractiveness of football as a sport in this country and what it can bring to individual kids,\u201d Mendoza Sr. said. \u201cI don\u2019t think of it as a Hispanic or Latino kid playing football or how it\u2019s represented, I think of it more as, this sport offers so much to so many young boys around the country that it really attracts a level of commitment, camaraderie and it speaks more to the game as the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernando and his younger brother, Alberto, a redshirt freshman quarterback at Indiana, traveled to Cuba with his maternal grandparents in 2018 to see where their roots started. They did service work with Catholic charities in their grandfather\u2019s hometown of Santiago. They took supplies and candy to elementary school kids. It was an eye-opening experience for them, said their mom, Elsa.<\/p>\n It showed the Mendoza boys \u201cwhat just 90 miles and different government ideologies can make,\u201d their dad said.<\/p>\n Latinos are football\u2019s fastest-growing minority fan base in the country. Former NFL head coach and current Cal general manager Ron Rivera (of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent) said without the likes of Plunkett and former Latino football stars such as former Oakland Raiders quarterback Tom Flores (of Mexican-American descent) and Cincinnati Bengals offensive tackle Anthony Mu\u00f1oz (also of Mexican-American descent), he wouldn\u2019t have had as much self-belief that he could succeed. Rivera went on to be part of the vaunted 1985 Chicago Bears defense and coached for 27 years in the NFL.<\/p>\n This fall, Rivera and Mu\u00f1oz helped launch the Hispanic Football Hall of Fame, which has already announced a partnership with the NFL.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of pressure, but to me, it\u2019s about an opportunity, it\u2019s about a challenge,\u201d Rivera said. \u201cThat\u2019s what this country is based on. This is supposed to be the country of opportunity. Not everybody\u2019s opportunity is the same. It\u2019s not always fair. But if you\u2019ve got an opportunity and you don\u2019t take it, that\u2019s on you.\u201d<\/p>\n Mendoza and Pavia certainly have. And while their sensational senior seasons have nabbed weekly headlines, they\u2019re not the only star players of Latino or Hispanic descent in 2025. Texas Tech star linebacker Jacob Rodriguez is spearheading one of the best defenses in the country. Texas A&M\u2019s KC Concepcion is one of the best receivers in the country. Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar has the Volunteers in the Top 25.<\/p>\n Former St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Jesus Ortiz said you cannot tell the story of college football this year without members of the Latino and Hispanic community and their starring roles in success. Ortiz is now the publisher of Our Esquina<\/a>, an online publication dedicated to covering athletes of Latino and Hispanic descent around the country.<\/p>\n To have Mendoza and Pavia entrenched as candidates for one of the most recognized awards in sports can go a long way for the communities.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that is uplifting, and I would argue, necessary at this point in time of our nation\u2019s history,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cWhere, if you\u2019re not watching ESPN and are instead watching CNN or CNBC, you\u2019re seeing our people arrested and dragged. Citizens or non-citizens. This is huge because Latinos need to see themselves \u2014 like everybody else \u2014 as somebody that has a place in this country. And there\u2019s nothing more American than baseball \u2026 and college football.\u201d<\/p>\n When Pavia\u2019s mom and siblings flew to Nashville for Vanderbilt\u2019s season opener against Charleston Southern on Aug. 30, Javier saw something similar on the wall of his younger brother\u2019s room in his apartment. Another photo of the Heisman Trophy.<\/p>\n \u201cWaking up and seeing that every day will instill it in your mind and motivate you,\u201d Javier said.\n<\/p><\/div>\n Javier Pavia walked into his younger brother\u2019s dormitory in Roswell, N.M., and immediately noticed the printed photo taped to the wall. His brother, Diego, a true freshman quarterback at the New Mexico Military Institute, a public military junior college, wasn\u2019t even 18. He was perceived to be too small, too stocky, with an arm that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/A-Latino-or-Hispanic-Heisman-Diego-Pavia-and-Fernando-Mendoza.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12203,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12201\/revisions\/12203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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