Description

Fernando Mendoza's road to a Topps card was not the well-lit prospect pipeline most first-round quarterbacks travel. Out of Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, he was lightly recruited, committing first to Yale before switching to Cal. He redshirted his first year in Berkeley in 2022, worked his way into the lineup for the back half of 2023, and started the full 2024 season for the Golden Bears without ever becoming a household name. When his eligibility at Cal ran out, he entered the transfer portal and landed at Indiana, joining a program that had never won a Big Ten title in the modern era and had exactly one Heisman finalist in its history. What followed in Bloomington was one of the more dramatic one-year turns college football has seen. In his only season as a Hoosier, Mendoza started all 16 games, completed 72 percent of his throws, and threw for 3,535 yards with 41 touchdowns against just six interceptions while adding seven more scores on the ground. He led the nation in touchdown passes and quarterback efficiency, and he did it while helping Indiana to an undefeated 13-0 regular season, a Big Ten Championship win over Ohio State, and the program's first-ever No. 1 ranking. In the national title game against Miami he took a beating — three sacks and several more hits — but delivered the signature moment of his college career, a fourth-down touchdown run in the fourth quarter that helped seal Indiana's first national championship. That season earned him the 2025 Heisman Trophy as the first winner in Indiana history, and only the second Hoosier ever to be a finalist. He won it convincingly, finishing first in every voting region and taking home 84.66 percent of the available points, the seventh-highest share in the award's history. Days later he announced he would forgo remaining eligibility and enter the 2026 NFL Draft, capping a two-school, four-year college career that began as a redshirt afterthought and ended with him being treated as a top pick. This 2025 Bowman University Chrome #109 is Mendoza's Bowman Chrome debut, issued while he was still a college quarterback at Indiana and before any of what followed — the Big Ten title, the national championship, the Heisman, the jump to the top of NFL draft boards. Bowman's college-focused Chrome line exists specifically to catch players like this before they turn pro, and this card was printed and sold months before the season made his name.