Miami-Cal has ‘personal implications’ for Golden Bears QB, Columbus alum Fernando Mendoza

Fernando Mendoza wanted to play for the Miami Hurricanes. His football career came to life about 5 miles from the University of Miami campus when he played at Miami Columbus High, the alma mater of UM coach Mario Cristobal (who played with Mendoza’s dad, also named Fernando, during their days as Explorers).

So to say Saturday’s 10:30 p.m. game between the No. 8 Hurricanes (5-0, 1-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) and the Cal Golden Bears (3-1, 0-1 ACC) has extra meaning for Mendoza, who is in his first full season as Cal’s starting quarterback as a redshirt sophomore, might be a bit of an understatement.

This will be Mendoza’s first time playing against his hometown team, a team that only lightly recruited him and didn’t offer him a scholarship. It will come on a national stage, with ESPN’s “College GameDay” going live from Berkeley ahead of the night game at California Memorial Stadium. And it comes when Cal is trying to rebound from its 14-9 loss to Florida State two weeks ago in its ACC opener.

It’s a lot for Mendoza to wrap his head around, and he is doing his best to compartmentalize it all before kickoff.

“I have personal implications for the game — really, really wanting to succeed and do well against Miami,” Mendoza, who turned 21 on Tuesday, told reporters this week. “But at the same moment, especially as the quarterback, you want to do so, so well and you put all that added, unneeded pressure on yourself, that’s when you end up not performing as well.”

Mendoza wasn’t a highly rated recruit coming out of high school despite helping lead Columbus to a Tri-County title during the COVID-impacted 2020 high school season as a junior and to the Class 8A state semifinals in 2021 as a senior. The 247Sports composite ranking pegged him as a two-star prospect and the No. 140 quarterback overall in the Class of 2022. He had just a half dozen scholarship offers coming out of high school.

As Mendoza recalled the experience while speaking at ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte, North Carolina, he went to a Hurricanes football camp his senior year. When he asked if Miami had interest in him, the message was “we might take you as a walk-on.”

“It lit a fire under me,” Mendoza said. “I was sad, and then I came to a realization: I’m not going to be a Miami football player, but it wasn’t God’s path for me.”

That path led him across the country to Cal, the biggest name on the college football front among the schools that did offer him a scholarship (the others were FIU, Bryant, Lehigh, Penn and Yale).

Mendoza redshirted his first year on campus and played in nine games as a redshirt freshman in 2023, completing 63 percent of his passes for 1,708 yards and 14 touchdowns against 10 interceptions after beginning the season as Cal’s third-string quarterback.

Entering Saturday’s game against Miami, Mendoza has completed 67 percent of his passes this season (83 of 123) for 892 yards and five touchdowns with two interceptions; he threw for a career-high 303 yards in the Golden Bears’ loss to FSU.

While the sting of not playing for Miami remains, his admiration for the school hasn’t faded — nor will it. Mendoza said he has been asked before to do the upside down U as a taunt to the Hurricanes.

Not gonna happen, he said.

“That is something that I’ll never do,” Mendoza said, “just because of the respect.”