How formative years at Cal prepped Fernando Mendoza to play for the Raiders

BERKELEY, Calif. — The cap and the gown were waiting, hanging at the Haas School of Business for Fernando Mendoza, whose travel plans to the Bay were in flux until the Las Vegas Raiders cemented their schedule. The team’s offseason organized team activities were set to conflict with graduation for the top draft pick and rookie quarterback.

As soon as they didn’t, he finalized a flight.

Save for a rep from his agency, Mendoza returned alone to Cal, the campus he used to captivate, by way of an hour-long flight from Las Vegas. With blue and gold pride, at home again, surrounded by hundreds of likeminded Bears, he walked across the stage and accepted his diploma.

His colors had changed — yet stayed the same.

“It’s like seeing an old friend, right?” said Dan Himelstein, who had taught Mendoza business at Cal and hosted him for May commencement in lieu of his mentor, Stephen Etter. “It’s not like, oh my God, this No. 1 pick, this Heisman Trophy winner, right?’ … Felt like another kid. … This his home for him from a college point of view.”

As Mendoza prepares to wear silver and black as the Raiders’ starting quarterback, he’s using the lessons he learned at Cal, both on and away from the football field. His three-year tenure playing for the Bears forged the skill and will fine-tuned at Indiana, where he transferred to win the Heisman Trophy and lead the Hoosiers to the national title.

Mendoza’s starting debut Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks at Allegiant Stadium is stirring support at his East Bay alma mater. Etter missed Mendoza’s commencement in part because of the changing schedule, but flew in Friday for Sunday’s game.

“From the time he started and was a backup on the bench and in the quarterback room, he had the vision,” said Etter, a Cal alum and business instructor who taught Mendoza and advises athletics.

A trusted voice to this day for Mendoza, who reverently still addresses him as “Professor,” Etter added, “He did the work. He fought through the setbacks. … He fought through the mental mistakes to do it. … The leadership is really, really evident with him.”

‘Everyone loved him’

Mendoza’s Golden Bears letterman’s jacket hung for a time in his Raiders locker, nestled alongside the now-empty locker vacated this week by Kirk Cousins. He still keeps tabs on Cal’s football team along with the friends he made on campus. Some caught up with Mendoza in New York when the New York Jets played host to the Raiders this month.

Others tap in via text message or weekly preplanned FaceTime calls. Once a friend, always a friend, no matter how busy Mendoza becomes. Sometimes Himelstein or Etter still get random messages or photos from Mendoza. All the more meaningful, it being understood how his time is more precious nowadays.

“Everyone loved him … and to this day, he’ll never act too big-time for anybody,” said Michael Luckhurst, Cal’s former kicker, Mendoza’s former roommate and still among his closest friends.

“Almost everyone would change having the year he’s had, and he hasn’t changed a single bit. … Even if someone he barely knows is texting him from Cal, he remembers what we did or remembers the time we had with them. … He’s never too busy for people that were always there.”

Luckhurst got a text from Mendoza, thriving in Miami, under-recruited and previous committed to quarterback Yale, upon his pledge to play football at Cal. They reconnected as freshman roommates as part of a quad in Clark Kerr Residence Hall with two other students who didn’t play football.

Mendoza loves them all the same. He still counts them — Aryan Bhadouria, founder of a company merging artificial intelligence and education and Nick Qasawadish, an investment banker — alongside Luckhurst with his closest friends. Within two days of living on campus, he knew the names of all of his classmates.

When Mendoza was settling into his dorm – pivoting from Yale to Cal at the behest of then-Bears quarterbacks coach Bill Musgrave, who was tipped off by a friend about Mendoza — he laid out his goals and set boundaries with Luckhurst, matter-of-factly telling him he came to Cal to start behind center. Everything he did was geared toward bettering his passing or business acumen, steeled at Haas, a freshman standout thriving in a program for sophomores.

“I don’t think he wanted people to know (he played) football. He wanted them to know him as Fernando the student,” Etter said. He noted Mendoza jotted notes with a pen and paper like he’d draw up plays, preferring old-school formulas rather than those built into Microsoft Excel.

An active participant during classes, Mendoza regularly fostered discussion, asking thought-provoking questions and never hesitating to hop on the phone if necessary.

“If he wasn’t where he is, he’d be at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley in New York, and he may still be there when he’s done … because has the skill base to be able to be there,” Etter said. “He was a natural leader … a tenacious time manager and wasn’t ever using athletics as an excuse for not working hard in academics.”

Overcoming adversity

If Mendoza wasn’t watching film or training at Cal’s football complex, he was studying at Haas across the street, hanging at home — a three-minute walk from the football facility — and studying there or playing Madden NFL or Fallout with friends. A redshirt during his freshman year of 2022, he cooked the Bears as the scout-team passer, flashing his arm talent, feel and timing he has further honed.

Not on the travel roster at first but eager to help however he could, Mendoza practiced holding with Luckhurst in the hallways to be of service on Saturdays. Being patient and developing didn’t bother Mendoza one iota because he knew when he won the job, he wouldn’t relinquish it, quietly certain he’d play on Sundays.

“It was just like, ‘I’m going to do that,’” said Luckhurst, the founder of a real estate development company.

Though Mendoza diced up the first-team defense, a pair of quarterbacks (Ben Finley from North Carolina State and Sam Jackson from Texas Christian) were brought in to compete with him during his redshirt freshman season. They both got cracks before Mendoza, who waited until Week 6 to debut against Oregon State.

Only an illness – during Cal’s regular-season finale his redshirt sophomore season against Southern Methodist – could keep him off the field.

No matter how his protection held up.

Mendoza finished his freshman season with 1,708 passing yards, 14 touchdowns and 10 interceptions in eight starts, leading Cal to three straight season-ending wins for a berth in the Independence Bowl. His play, charisma and modest charm would captivate the community, but his three-pick showing – after which he cried at the postgame podium, shaking every reporter’s hand afterward anyway — in a blowout loss to Texas Tech turned fickle fans into keyboard warriors.

“He was getting cooked on Twitter … and up until then, everyone was like, ‘This is our savior,’” Luckhurst said, having leaned on Mendoza for moral support after missing key kicks at a time at Cal.

“He was struggling for a couple days … but … he just flipped this switch and was like, ‘I’m not feeling sorry (for myself). … I’m going to be the best Fernando I can be and I’ll figure it out.’”

Mendoza’s thing, then and now: focusing on controlling what he can control.

He couldn’t control that Cal recruited Chandler Rogers (North Texas) to take his place, or demotions to the backup offenses no matter how he played in 2023. He could control the way he responded, by cooking in practice over and over, forcing his coaches to start him regardless and harvesting the seeds of steely resolve.

“They were horrible to him,” Luckhurst said. “They always brought in other guys to take his spot. … But it gave him the mental edge, and that’s where I think he gained most of his mental fortitude.

“At Indiana is where I think he grew physically as a football player.”

Part of the community

Any blowback Mendoza faced didn’t affect his commitment to Cal community. Ahead of his redshirt sophomore year, he started a fundraising partnership with La Burrita. The campus hot spot at which he dined, forming friendships with the staffers naturally, sold the “Mendoza Burrito” for which all proceeds would support awareness for multiple sclerosis, afflicting his mother, Elsa, since 2008.

The partnership served as the basis for the Mendoza Family Foundation, founded last year – by Mendoza and his family – and raising this year more than $1 million for MS awareness.

Said Beck O’Kelly, a senior at Cal, Mendoza’s longtime friend, former classmate and partner on the project at La Burrita: “The character and the way he treats people makes him a natural leader. … He prioritizes people in a way you don’t see often … and the energy is extremely contagious. And that hasn’t left the Berkeley community at all.”

Even though he’s been gone for almost two years.

Mendoza fended off Rogers during camp – though Rogers still had a package he’d run for the Bears – and built on his redshirt freshman season with 3,004 passing yards, 16 touchdowns and six interceptions in 11 games. Transferring didn’t sit well with Cal, for which Mendoza wanted to win, but Indiana recruited Mendoza to be its guy.

No competition necessary, but leaving Cal still cut Mendoza, who cried when he boarded his rideshare to the airport.

“It wasn’t a slam-dunk, economic, best-for-me decision,” said Etter, who consoled Mendoza on the phone. “He loved his friends here. He loved the mentoring and the teachers. He loved the team and the coaches, but had to make this decision that he and his family had to make. I think he’ll always be a Bear and always bleed blue and gold.”

That’s why Mendoza, then at Indiana, finished his degree at Cal remotely, returning to campus for in-person finals. Why he shouted out his “Cal family” during his Heisman Trophy acceptance speech “for educating me, giving me the foundation that enabled me to grow into the person I am today.”

Why he made sure that morning in May, he’d catch a flight bound back to the Bay, to get his diploma and see his people.

They’ll be seeing him Sunday in silver and black.

“He was going to be successful in anything he put his mind to,” O’Kelly said. “Whether that’s being a starting quarterback in the NFL, whether that’s being a high-level business person. He knows how to prepare, he knows how to treat people and he’s going to be successful in anything he puts his mind to.”

Contact Sam Gordon at [email protected]. Follow @BySamGordon on X.