MIAMI GARDENS — To see the play today, tomorrow, a year from now, you want to say he should have been down at the 5.
Then you’ll catch yourself.
You’ll remind yourself if anything or anyone in this story played out the way things should have been, he — he being Fernando Mendoza — and they — the Indiana Hoosiers — shouldn’t have been anywhere near Hard Rock Stadium and the College Football Playoff championship game.
So what’s 5 more yards, especially when the thing you’re scripting is as much a fairytale as real life?
Yes indeed, Mendoza continued on his merry way, pin-balling and spinning and flying until he landed in the end zone. And in that moment, you knew that his 12-yard touchdown run had put Indiana in control of what proved to be a 27-21 victory over the Miami Hurricanes at Hard Rock Stadium.
How cute. The kid who wasn’t wanted pulled it off for the team that never could shoot straight (until now).
“Had to go airborne,” Mendoza said. “I would die for my team.”
He keeps launching himself like this when he gets to the NFL, he may get that wish. That’s for another day, though. On this night, all that mattered was that coach Curt Cignetti completed his miracle endeavor, turning the school that had lost more college football games than any other into the first one to win 16 games in one season — and a perfect season at that.
“It probably is one of the greatest sports stories of all time,” Cignetti said.
If you’re inclined to remove “probably” from that statement, go for it.
Speaking of which, Cignetti did just that. The fateful Mendoza touchdown excursion came within an eyelash of never happening before Cignetti decided to go for it.
“Ran the field-goal team out there,” he said. “Didn’t feel good about it. I called timeout.”
Then he called for his Heisman winner and pulled a special play from his back pocket. It was a play they’d run earlier in the game. The hunch was UM would call the same defense. Cignetti gambled correctly.
“We put it in for this game,” Cignetti said. “It was a quarterback draw, but it was blocked differently (earlier). And we rolled the dice and said they’re going to be in it again, and they were. We blocked it well, he broke a tackle or two and got in the end zone.”
This was Fernando Mendoza’s ‘John Elway moment’
It was more than “a tackle or two.” Somewhere, you have to think, there was one interested onlooker watching his TV and knowing exactly what Mendoza was thinking and feeling at that moment. John Elway pulled off what became known as his “helicopter run” in the Super Bowl XXXII win against Green Bay, converting a third-and-6 play that led to a touchdown. Elway, too, had no regard for his body on the play. Years later, he could laugh that it was a play he didn’t care much for, yet it “turned out to be one of the plays I’m remembered for the most.”
No matter what Mendoza does in the NFL, this was his Elway moment.
“He wasn’t going to be denied,” Cignetti said. “Great play by him.”
Mendoza had six points and at least that many bruises for his trouble.
“It’s a physical game,” he said, kissing it off at about the same time “Hurts So Good,” by Indiana’s own John Mellencamp, blared over the P.A.
“We didn’t make it this far not to lay it on the line,” Mendoza said.
Indiana was up 17-14 with nine minutes left and facing a fourth-and-4 from the UM 12. The first few yards of his run were relatively routine. Then he was hit by linebacker Wesley Bissainthe. Despite spinning, Mendoza kept his balance, then launched his 6-foot-5 frame into the air as linebacker Mohamed Toure and lineman Ahmad Moten Sr. converged on him. They were too late. By the time Mendoza began his descent, he’d broken the plane and the Hoosiers had broken the glass ceiling.
“This is the most special moment of my life,” Mendoza said.
Up in the stands, friends and family clad in Hoosier red celebrated. His father reached down to hug his mother, who’s confined to a wheelchair while battling multiple sclerosis. In the days leading up to this game, Fernando described her as “my light, my everything, and she’s my why.” When he talked about her fight and her struggle, it was with reverence that told you no struggle he’ll ever face on a football field could compare.
Of course, that’s only part of what ought to make even ardent Hurricanes fans know if they had to come up short against anybody, at least it was this team and this classy player. Mendoza had grown up in Coral Gables and, for that matter, in this stadium, rooting for the Hurricanes.
“This victory is so sweet for the entire Hoosier nation,” Mendoza said. “But it’s super sweet for myself. I was a two-star recruit coming out of high school. I got declined to walk on at the University of Miami. Full-circle moment here, playing in Miami for all the friends and family.”
The rest of the college football world had no idea what was coming for them. A 16-0 season at Alabama, at Ohio State, at Georgia? That would make sense. But at a basketball school? With zero five-star recruits?
“I would like to say our NIL isn’t near what people think it is,” said Cignetti, who surely would be portrayed by Gene Hackman in the movie if the actor were still with us. “Are there eight first-round draft choices on this team? No, probably not. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
After all they’d been through together, the work was done. Somewhere in the bedlam, the deeply religious Mendoza blurted out a curse word, later joking that he finally escaped the prefabricated cliches his PR team feeds him.
Cignetti found a quiet moment to down some Hoosier beer (“Best beer of my life.”). He made no promises that would be his last one on this night, and who could blame him?
“Tonight’s going to be an insane night,” Mendoza said.
After an insane season capped by an insane touchdown, what else could it be?
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Fernando Mendoza launches himself, Indiana over Miami | Habib
Reporting by Hal Habib, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
