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As expected, Fernando Mendoza became Indiana’s first Heisman winner last night. Along the way, there was also a pretty robust day of college football in all four levels.
Afterparty: Six-decade comeback falls just short
From 1953 to 1964 under College Football Hall of Fame coach Billy Nicks, Prairie View A&M won five HBCU national championships. At the end of that run, the Panthers ranked behind only Florida A&M, Morgan State and Tuskegee in the overall HBCU title count (though this is college football, so almost everyone’s claims were disputed along the way).
But it’s been a long time since those glory days were the most noteworthy thing about Prairie View football history. From Oct. 1989 to Sept. 1998, the Panthers lost 80 straight games, still by far the worst-ever streak in any level of NCAA or pro football.
The program’s comeback since then has had its highs, including a SWAC championship in 2009. But yesterday, Prairie View reached the very brink of an outright HBCU title after 61 years away.
Against South Carolina State in Atlanta’s Celebration Bowl, the Panthers led 21-0 before a rally, then scored first in overtime. After the Bulldogs tied it back up at 38, the two-point shootout began. This S.C. State lunge was ruled a go-ahead score (see the ball in No. 10’s right hand):
After review, the crowd and broadcast alike were surprised to learn the call remained intact. I didn’t see any angle where it looked like Tyler Smith had been able to get that ball inside the pylon. Alas.
That two-pointer ended up being the deciding score, 40-38 in 4OT, and for the second time in five years, South Carolina State is the Celebration Bowl champ. “One of the most dramatic finishes in HBCU football history,” as HBCU Gameday put it.
Considering everything that’d led to that moment for PVAMU, from six decades in the wilderness to first-year head coach Tremaine Jackson’s 70-man roster overhaul, I think that championship-deciding review is the roughest officiating I’ve seen all season. Hopefully that doesn’t sound like taking anything away from S.C. State, now 19-6 in two years under coach Chennis Berry.
The Celebration Bowl itself turned 10 years old yesterday. Now one of college football’s stablest and consistently best-attended postseason games, it’s easily the postseason’s best party. Yesterday, it also produced the funniest thing I saw all day: a Bulldog carrying his cramping teammate to the sideline.
Superlatives
Until Saturday College Football Player of the Year: Diego Pavia. As expected, the Vanderbilt quarterback finished second in Heisman voting last night, though surprisingly far behind Mendoza.
Pavia was the engine behind Vanderbilt’s two-year rise from 2-10 to 10-2, virtually equaling Mendoza and fourth-place Heisman finalist Julian Sayin this season in yards per throw while also being a far more threatening runner, leading the Power 4 with 334.8 total yards per game. He was not as polished a speaker as Mendoza, to say the the least, talking literally unbelievable trash the entire time, albeit backing up almost all of it.
Of course, his fellow former overlooked recruit, Mendoza, having transferred to Indiana from Cal, then turned an 11-win team into a 13-win (and counting) team is something, and a very big something. The Hoosiers’ first outright Big Ten title since 1945, the Playoff No. 1 seed and Heisman Moments™️ every few weeks along the way. A worthy winner, and a beautiful speech.
It’d be difficult to tell the story of 2025 without Mendoza, that’s for sure. And a Heisman shouldn’t be a lifetime-achievement award, but a single-season honor. Either way, I’d argue Pavia’s mark on college football was bigger to this point, though Mendoza has the chance to leave the biggest mark of all — in the title game in his Miami hometown, as he acknowledged to Holly Rowe last night.
Elsewhere in awards, Curt Cignetti is winning a second round of various coach of the year trophies, and Texas Tech linebacker Jacob Rodriguez needs a wheelbarrow. Awards tracker here.
Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love, who finished third in Heisman voting, had probably the most reasonable take of anyone on the Irish’s Playoff snub.
Army-Navy of the Year: Army-Navy. The same thing every December, a holiday-season staple like “A Christmas Story,” “Iron Man 3” or “Friday After Next.” The win-loss records never convey anything about what the final score might look like, Vegas will envision a low-scoring game (but still overestimate the total) and it’ll all come down to the wire, followed by the winning coach saying something like, “It wasn’t pretty.”
Yesterday in Baltimore, Navy won 17-16 (pregame over/under at BetMGM: a generous 39.5 points), its first repeat win since 2015. Neither team had 300 total yards, neither team threw for 100 and the weather looked gray. Perfection.
Under Brian Newberry, who did not find the whole thing pretty, the Midshipmen have won 10 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time — and can go for 11 against Cincinnati in the Liberty Bowl. Army, 6-6, gets UConn in the Fenway.
Overlapping Timelines Conundrum of the Week: Hey, I wonder if Navy would’ve been ranked by the committee … if the Playoff bracket had been drawn up after the regular season actually ended. Wonder if that would’ve pushed Notre Dame, which beat the Mids 49-10, into the Playoff. What a weird sport!
Best Postseason Environment of the Season: That’ll be next week in the first Montana-Montana State playoff meeting ever, an FCS semifinal showdown between the bracket’s top two remaining seeds — live in MSU’s Bozeman stadium, not a million miles away at the home of the Atlanta Falcons, FBS-style. (Early forecast: a dusting of snow.)
To get us there, No. 2 Montana State raced past No. 7 Stephen F. Austin 44-28 on Friday, before No. 3 Montana took out the surprising final Dakota, No. 11 South Dakota, 52-22. The Brawl of the Wild redux’s winner will be a large title favorite over either the pope’s No. 12 Villanova Wildcats (who pulled off another road win, this time at No. 4 Tarleton State 26-21) or the North Dakota State defeater, non-seeded Illinois State, which upset No. 8 UC Davis 42-31 last night.
DII: No. 1 Ferris State (Mich.) returns to next week’s title game, joined by No. 3 Harding (Ark.), which upset No. 2 Kutztown (Penn.) on the road 49-27. Ferris won three of the last four DII national titles, while Harding won the other one in 2023. Harding’s flexbone offense has rushed for an all-NCAA-record 6,697 yards this season. (Previous record: 2023 Harding.)
DIII: Next week, defending champ North Central hosts John Carroll, while UW-River Falls welcomes Johns Hopkins. All-John title game on the line. Read the middle of this story from a month ago for more about River Falls’ scorching-hot offense.
Most Surprisingly Scheduled Bowl Game: Wait, Washington (9-4) beat Boise State (9-5) 38-10 in something called the “Bucked Up LA Bowl Hosted By Gronk” last night? Can confirm. At one point, the Huskies had maybe the most wide-open receiver I’ve ever seen.
With the FBS regular season in the books for just over an hour, the fourth edition of the LA Bowl kicked off. (Its name has been even longer before, by seven characters; 2021 had a “Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl Presented by Stifel.” No clue what Stifel is, let alone Bucked Up.)
Last season, South Alabama’s win over Western Michigan was the first-ever bowl to happen on the same day as Army-Navy, as far as I could tell. But that game was pretty easy to miss. Boise-Washington paired name brands on ABC, right after the Heisman ceremony. So I guess this is much more of a thing now.
Quick Snaps
🏈 “Former Michigan coach Sherrone Moore was arraigned Friday on charges of third-degree home invasion, stalking and breaking and entering, stemming from an alleged incident Wednesday involving a female Michigan football staffer.” Full details.
🎠 In the carousel:
Longtime Utah coach-in-waiting Morgan Scalley is taking over for Kyle Whittingham, who’ll step down after 21 years, following the Las Vegas Bowl against Nebraska. Salt Lake City native Scalley has been at Utah almost non-stop since playing DB there in the 2000s. His coach-in-waiting status was temporarily revoked in 2020 after the discovery of a racial slur in one of his texts.
Marcus Freeman has little reason to ever leave Notre Dame for another college job. An NFL job, though? In Dianna Russini’s weekend NFL notebook, she says the New York Giants and likely others are interested. Would turn a very busy coaching carousel into an absolute all-timer.
Washington State’s new head coach will be Missouri OC Kirby Moore, younger brother of Saints head coach Kellen. (That’s where the former Boise State QB is now, yes. They’re 3-10.)
Southern Miss promoted OC Blake Anderson to replace Charles Huff, gone to Memphis. Between Anderson’s current and previous Hattiesburg stints, he was the head coach at Arkansas State and Utah State, going 74-54. The Aggies fired him in 2024 after he contacted a potential domestic violence victim, following one of his players being arrested.
Coastal Carolina’s new head coach is Ryan Beard, Bobby Petrino’s 36-year-old son-in-law who just led Missouri State to a 7-5 FBS debut season.
📰 News:
The newly released 2026 SEC slate includes the end of the exhausting nine-game-schedule debate, along with the conference making sure Lane Kiffin’s return to Ole Miss happens as early in the season as possible. (Maybe to make sure he hasn’t changed jobs by then?)
“USC is looking into the possibility of playing its home football games at SoFi Stadium in 2028. The one-season move would be necessary because of a conflict with the 2028 Olympics.”
The Big 12 is doing some sort of risky-sounding money thing I’m not likely to understand. Moving on.
Mementos
Look at these mustaches:
🔜 Stache Bowl on ESPN+
— Big Sky Conference (@bigskyconf.bsky.social) December 13, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Majestic plumage, gentlemen. Later this week, let’s review this season’s biggest surprises and really start digging into bowl season. Holler at untilsaturday@theathletic.com if you would like a 🫡 emoji response.
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