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Fernando Mendoza didn’t just pull off the seemingly impossible in powering Indiana to 16-0 perfection and the first national championship in program history.
Doing that alone makes the young man from Miami a Hoosier football legend to go with all those legends of the hardwood that were birthed in Bloomington. But there was a ton more attached to Mendoza’s magical ride through the 2025 season, and it centered on college football’s most prestigious individual award, the one handed out every mid-December, the one the Big Ten had remarkably whiffed on every year since 2006.
Last fall, at long last, someone from the Big Ten knocked it out of the park and ran off with the proud conference’s first Heisman since Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith did the trick almost 2 decades earlier. That someone was most definitely Mendoza, the California transfer who took the league by storm, never lost a game at IU and kept tightening his grip on the Heisman with each passing week and win. Mendoza blew past Vanderbilt counterpart Diego Pavia, who was second but also was nearly 1,000 points behind Mendoza when the final points were tabulated.
If this were an election and not a college football award presentation, Mendoza’s history-making Heisman win would’ve been crystalized as a landslide victory for a program that had never won the award and a conference that hadn’t won it in way too long. All that waiting was laid to waste last December in New York City, when the Big Ten finally placed a shiny Heisman Trophy next to all the national titles the conference suddenly keeps winning.
Mendoza would’ve had a great shot to capture back-to-back Heismans, just like Ohio State running back Archie Griffin did for the Big Ten in 1974 and ’75. He could’ve joined Griffin as the only 2-time winners of the illustrious award, but Mendoza is off to the NFL, maybe as the No. 1 pick in the entire draft this spring. This doesn’t mean the Big Ten can’t get on a little roll here and start making up for lost time with another Heisman victory, it just means it can’t be Mendoza again.
Who can it be in 2026 from the conference? Well, a lot of players. There will be plenty of Heisman quality residing in the Big Ten this fall, from star players who shockingly decided to return to a few who sniffed the award but fell short last season. We’ll take an early look at the top 5 Heisman Trophy contenders from the Big Ten as it stands right now:
1. Dante Moore, Oregon quarterback
Moore stunned many when he announced on Jan. 14 that he was returning to Eugene to try to lead the Ducks all the way this time. This instantly made Oregon one of the heavy favorites to finally climb the mountain and win it all in 2026 and, naturally, it also made Moore one of the heavy favorites to capture the Heisman Trophy. Long-suffering Ducks fans yearn for the former to happen at long last, but they wouldn’t mind seeing both become reality either.
After attempting 8 passes during the 2024 season while sitting behind star Dillon Gabriel, Moore made his transfer from UCLA count last season by becoming a star himself as a sophomore. He threw for a whopping 3,565 yards with 30 touchdown passes, and he overcame his 10 interceptions to help lead Oregon all the way to the College Football Playoff semifinals. Moore and the Ducks were dominated by Fernando Mendoza and Indiana in those semis, and Moore lost to Mendoza in the regular season, too — at home, no less.
But Moore is making that somewhat shocking return to college football instead of turning pro and, sure, he’s coming back to Eugene with the big-picture idea of bettering his NFL Draft stock for 2027. But there are 2 other big things the junior-to-be surely has in the back of his mind. One is getting 2 wins further than he did last season, and the other is snagging that Heisman in December — in other words, the very 2 things Mendoza got in the way of during the 2025 season.
Mendoza won’t be in the way in 2026. He did go pro, like most expected Moore to do, and Mendoza is poised to be the No. 1 pick in this spring’s draft in Pittsburgh. Moore won’t be part of Mendoza’s quarterback class because he’s decided to play the “long game” for a little bit longer, it turns out. He completed an impressive 71.8% of his passes last season despite it being the first time in his college football career where he’s played the entire year.
Moore got a big-time taste of success during that breakthrough year. Now, Moore has chosen to come back for an encore performance, and after the curtain comes down on the 2026 regular season, he has a great chance to join fellow quarterback Marcus Mariota as the only Heisman Trophy winners in Oregon’s proud history.
Dante Moore and 3 other players on this list all have 7% chances to win the Heisman this season, per Kalshi. Check out the latest market below:
2. Jeremiah Smith, Ohio State wide receiver
The kid from South Florida exploded onto the college football scene as a freshman in 2024, catching 76 passes for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns. It was a freshman season for the ages, and it helped Ohio State win a national championship. Then Smith did one better, not suffering the sophomore slump fellow star wideout Ryan Williams of Alabama did in 2025. Instead, he torched Big Ten defenses again, this time catching 87 passes for 1,243 yards and 12 TDs.
It didn’t earn Smith a Heisman Trophy, but he came pretty close for a sophomore and for a wide receiver, finishing in 6th place in the final voting. Smith is back for another run in Columbus in 2026, and unlike last season, he won’t have to get used to catching passes from a different quarterback. That’s because Julian Sayin, who blossomed quickly in his first season as the Buckeyes’ starter in 2025, is also back, giving Smith a huge edge in helping Ohio State win games and in trying to become one of the few wideouts to ever win the Heisman.
Of course, there is a flip side to Smith’s pursuit, and that’s the fact that his quarterback should most definitely also be in the running (more on that next). Sayin did a couple of spots better than Smith in the 2025 Heisman voting, finishing 4th, and Smith’s success almost directly translates to Sayin’s success, so a few different scenarios could unfold this fall. Sayin could help Smith capture the Heisman, or vice versa, or their successes as high-profile stars could cancel each other out, helping another contender slip through and win the award instead.
No matter what happens with Sayin, as long as Smith stays healthy, as he pretty much has during his first 2 starlit seasons in Columbus, the catches, yards and touchdowns will pile up again, and he could very well find himself in New York City in mid-December as a Heisman finalist.
Or, just maybe, Smith will do a little better than that even by winning the darn thing.
3. Julian Sayin, Ohio State quarterback
As mentioned above, Sayin lived up to the lofty expectations set for him in 2025, finishing 4th in the Heisman voting while calming nervous Buckeyes fans who had fallen in love with Will Howard, who led Ohio State to a national title in his only season there. Sayin swooped in, won the starting job in fall camp over Lincoln Kienholz and led the Buckeyes to a 12-0 regular season.
Things went sideways after that when the lights got brighter, as Sayin struggled in losses to Indiana in the Big Ten title game and to Miami in the Playoff quarterfinals. He registered 2 of his 3 lowest QBR ratings of the season in those 2 crushing losses, and Ohio State combined for only 24 points in the setbacks that ended a drive to repeat on a very sour note. And while it also revealed Sayin’s shortcomings as a whole, his Heisman chances pretty much went up in smoke because he lost to Indiana and he lost to Fernando Mendoza.
Now, Mendoza’s numbers in the Big Ten title clash weren’t great either, but it was a 13-10 game, so they really weren’t going to be. But Mendoza got the all-important W, and his QBR of 89.6 that night in Indianapolis dwarfed Sayin’s miniscule 61.1. Sure, QBR ratings can sometimes be misleading, but sometimes they can tell the cold truth. The Sayin-led Buckeyes went cold in Indy, and the fact that it was exactly 1 week before the Heisman was awarded took away any shot that Sayin had of stealing it.
The Heisman Trophy was Mendoza’s — and the national championship trophy was his, too, a little over a month later. Sayin started the month of December with everything available to achieve and ended it with a New Year’s Eve night Playoff clunker against Miami. Happy New Year? Hardly.
But Sayin will almost assuredly learn from that December heartbreak in 2026, and you can bet it’ll all motivate him to no end to finish the job this fall. He still threw for a remarkable 3,610 yards with 32 touchdowns and 8 interceptions, and he completed an even more remarkable 77% of his passes as a first-year starter. Now, the young man who started his collegiate journey at Alabama before transferring after Nick Saban’s retirement is coming back to check off the few boxes that were left blank last season.
The biggest one is naturally that national championship he fell 3 wins short of. And you can also bet another one is that Heisman Trophy that a Big Ten rival quarterback took home instead. The 3 players who finished ahead of the Heisman finalist in the voting last year are all gone. This doesn’t mean Sayin’s path to the Heisman is all clear, because it never is — but it definitely means Sayin should already have the Statue of Liberty in his sights again this December.
4. Jayden Maiava, USC quarterback
The UNLV transfer could’ve ended up at Georgia. In fact, he did — for 1 day, before deciding to flip his commitment from Kirby Smart and play closer to home at USC. Things have worked out pretty well for the Hawaii native, who replaced an ineffective Miller Moss near the end of his first season at USC in 2024 and then exploded in 2025, throwing for 3,711 yards with 24 touchdowns.
Maiava also showed a knack for getting into the end zone with his legs, rushing for 6 touchdowns last season, and his season QBR of 89.9 wasn’t too shabby either. The Trojans were within ear shot of making the Playoff last season with Maiava at the helm before a late-season loss to Oregon and fellow Big Ten Heisman contender Dante Moore.
With Maiava back at Southern Cal for another go-around and with Lincoln Riley feeling the pressure from a demanding fan base to finally break through in Year 5, the stakes couldn’t be higher for the Trojans in 2026. Maiava can be the guy who leads USC back to the promised land, and he can also be the guy who continues the program’s illustrious history of Heisman Trophy winners.
5. Josh Hoover, Indiana quarterback
Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. could have easily been in this spot, after throwing for over 3,000 yards with 25 touchdown passes and 8 interceptions while rushing for another 611 yards and 6 TDs in his first full season as the starter. The point is, don’t sleep on Williams up there at Washington for the Heisman in 2026, but the bigger point is that a veteran quarterback with tons of college experience (and success) who’s now under the tutelage of Curt Cignetti simply can’t be left off this list.
That’s probably a bigger compliment to Cignetti than it is to Hoover, who will have the herculean task of replacing Fernando Mendoza this fall. Mendoza became an Indiana football legend despite being in Bloomington for just 1 year, and now Hoover will be trying to do something similar. Just maybe, that package of potential presents from the TCU transfer will include the same Heisman Trophy that Mendoza captured last December. Cignetti already can’t wait to get his hands on Hoover this spring.
And why wouldn’t he? Hoover threw for just under 3,500 yards with 29 TD passes during his final season at TCU. The 13 interceptions were a little too high, but Cignetti can fix that, right? Hoover nearly topped 4,000 yards passing in 2024, and he comes to Bloomington with 9,629 yards passing already to his name, to go with 71 touchdown tosses and 33 interceptions.
He hasn’t won to the highest degree, not yet at least, but Cignetti might have something to say about that this fall. Still, Hoover had a 19-12 record while at TCU, which isn’t bad, and remember this vital fact — Hoover is used to trying to replace a Heisman-worthy QB, taking over as the Horned Frogs starter during the 2023 season after Max Duggan was the Heisman runner-up the year before.
Who says Hoosier Heisman hysteria can’t strike again with a first-year transfer?