The game featured numerous players and coaches with ties to Miami’s Christopher Columbus High School.
Indiana’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, is seen as an inspiration to younger student-athletes in Miami.
The matchup was notable for featuring several prominent Cuban Americans, including Mendoza and Miami’s head coach.
MIAMI ― John Allen watched the college football national championship game intently, seeing a lot of himself in Indiana University’s star quarterback.
Not so much what Fernando Mendoza is able to do with the football, though Allen, a high school punter and kicker, sees some of that, too. But for nearly everything else.
Allen, 17, is a senior at Christopher Columbus High School, where Mendoza and his brother, Alberto, graduated from. Like Fernando Mendoza, he joined the Mas Family Program, Columbus’ honors track, and is a Miami Herald Silver Knight candidate. Mendoza graduated Columbus with a 5.2 grade point average, something Allen aspires to.
“It’s huge,” said Allen, who, a minority in this city, was rooting for the Hoosiers. “It makes younger kids want to work harder because they see it’s possible. It’s not just dreaming big: It’s like you’re literally watching it happen.”
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The highly-anticipated showdown between Heisman-Trophy-winner Mendoza, and the squad’s no-nonsense coach Curt Cignetti on one side, and the once-dynastic University of Miami Hurricanes on the other, led by head coach Mario Cristobal and quarterback Carson Beck, delivered in a game that stayed close all the way to the final seconds.
For months leading up to the Jan. 19 game, the intertwined storylines marveled college football fandom. Mendoza and younger brother Alberto, his backup QB at Indiana, both graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in Miami – where Cristobal, Offensive Line Coach Alex Mirabal and several Miami players also attended.
Cristobal played football there in the 1980s with Fernando and Alberto’s father, Fernando Mendoza IV.
‘The game itself was always a win. It was a great Miami storyline,’ Fernando Mendoza IV told USA TODAY on the field, after the game. ‘Players and coaches from the same community playing together.’
The matchup also featured multiple Cuban Americans – the Mendozas, Cristobal, Mirabal and Miami offensive lineman Ryan Rodriguez – in a rare top-billing for a major college football game.
Allen relished the outcome.
But the final score hardly mattered.
Miami at a standstill, watching National Championship
Across Miami – and particularly in the heavily Cuban-populated neighborhood of Westchester, where the Mendozas went to high school – youngsters pulled on crimson T-shirts and rooted for the Mendoza-led Hoosiers, signaling his growing influence among young players and non-athletes alike.
At an outdoor watch party at Columbus High School, a jumbotron screen blared the game as students, families and alumni sprawled on blankets on the football field to watch.
Manny Lopez, 16, proudly wore a crimson “INDIANA” T-shirt. He said relatives have attended Indiana University for years, creating a family tradition of studying in Bloomington. Those family members alerted Lopez to Mendoza after the quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in November, becoming the first Cuban-American to do so.
Asked what he admired about Mendoza, Lopez didn’t name any of his athletic or scholastic achievements.
“Mainly, I like his focus,” said Lopez, who is on the school’s water polo team, “how he keeps up with school, sports, his family, his faith – all of it.”
He added: “It really inspires me.”
Also attending the watch party was Robert Lewis, 27, a counselor at Columbus. He wore a maroon “MENDOZA MANIA” sweater. He was there with his mom, Maty Lewis, 55, who donned a green Miami Hurricanes sweater – and a white Hoosiers cap.
Born and raised in Miami, Maty Lewis said she is a longtime Canes fan but also respects the way Mendoza has raised money and awareness for her mom’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and is vocal about his faith and devotion to God.
“He’s just a great kid,” she said, her eyes misting. “We’re all winners tonight.”
Mendoza inspires next generation of high school football players
Mendoza has made inspiring others – especially younger student athletes – a cornerstone of his speeches and post-game talks. After winning the Heisman, Mendoza thanked his family, God, coaches and his teammates before turning his attention to kids growing up with similar dreams.
‘This is an important one, I want every kid out there who feels overlooked and underestimated, I was you. I was that kid too, I was in your shoes,” said Mendoza, who was a two-star recruit out of high school and was overlooked by many Division 1 football schools. “The truth is, you don’t need the most stars, hype or rankings, you just need discipline, heart and people who believe in you and your own abilities. I hope this moment shows you that chasing your dreams are worth it no matter how big or impossible they seem.”
Florida, of course, has long been a perennial powerhouse for recruiting high school football talent. But the past two decades has seen a noticeable shift in Cuban Americans and other Latinos in South Florida becoming focused on football.
Spurred on by the past successes of the Miami Dolphins perfect 1972 season and the state’s juggernaut status appearing in every national title game until 2002, Gen Xers took to playing football in high school. By the time they had kids, they placed them into rec leagues.
Today, their kids are the young players competing for spots in Catholic and private schools all over South Florida for a chance to be among the 7.5% that will make it to the college level. Just like Mendoza once did.
Lazaro Medina, 17, a senior, plays offensive line for the Columbus football squad. Before the game, he said he hopes the University of Miami wins its sixth national title, uniting the city and uncorking a party unseen in South Florida in decades.
But if the Canes were to lose, he’d like it to be against Mendoza, he said.
Medina won a state championship with younger brother Alberto, while he was still at Columbus. Both Mendozas have always displayed a classiness and moral fiber rare for young athletes, he said.
“If Mendoza wins, I’m fine with that,” he said.
Allen said he started following the Mendozas as an 8th grader in middle school, when his older brother, Rowe, played with the brothers at Columbus. He followed Mendoza’s path after high school. When he transferred to Indiana to join Alberto, Allen caught nearly every Hoosiers football game.
He snuck in glimpses of Mendoza accepting the Heisman on his smartphone while attending a formal dance in November. Mendoza’s acceptance speech was awe-inspiring, he said.
A win on Jan. 19 would cap an extraordinary journey for the Columbus alum, Allen said before the game. And the victory would further inspire a legion of feet to follow in his footsteps.
“I can’t wait for his postgame speech,” Allen said.
Jervis is a national correspondent based in Austin, Texas. Follow him on X: @MrRJervis.