Trump says Indiana Hoosiers QB Fernando Mendoza called him before missing White House event
Las Vegas Raiders rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza did not attend the White House's celebration of the Indiana University football team -- the 2025 College Football Playoff National Champions -- opting instead to call President Donald Trump on the phone, Trump said Monday.
Mendoza told the president he was missing the event honoring the Hoosiers due to practice with the Raiders.
“The reason he didn't [travel to the White House] is because he's at spring training, right?” Trump told the crowd full of Hoosiers dressed in cream and crimson. “He's [Mendoza’s] been great and he's at spring training -- like his first day or something. I said, 'you better go there'" he added.
The No. 1 NFL Draft pick and Heisman Trophy winner said earlier this month that he couldn’t attend the White House ceremony because he would be at the Raiders' off-season activities.
“I can't miss practice," Mendoza told reporters just days after he was selected first overall by the team. “As a rookie, I don't think that's a good look. I'm trying to best serve my teammates, and I don't know if that'd be accomplishing that goal,” Mendoza later added.
Despite missing the momentous occasion, Trump claimed Mendoza was a supporter.
“If he was not here for other reasons, like he didn't like Trump, or he didn't want to come, I wouldn't even mention him,” Trump quipped at the event on the White House South Lawn. “I wouldn't even mention the quarterback's name,” he said.
"But he's a great guy, actually, and he is actually a big fan of what we're doing for our country," Trump added.
Led by their star quarterback, Mendoza anchored the Hoosiers' undefeated season from start to finish, especially in their final game, using a late-game touchdown run to defeat the Miami Hurricanes 27-21 in the College Football Playoff national championship.
Trump praised Mendoza and the team on their 16-0 season at Monday’s ceremony that featured Coach Curt Cignetti, dozens of the team's returning players, and the school’s cheerleading program. The president lauded Cignetti as the best college football coach of the last decade.
“I believe you’re the biggest story,” Trump said about Cignetti and the team. “There is no story like this,” he said, adding, “The Hoosiers delivered the program's first ever undefeated, untied season and capped it off with their first ever national title."
Several of the team’s key departures were also notably absent. Cignetti said it’s largely due to 15 players competing for professional teams.
“I can't believe it,” Trump said, adding, “No wonder you won.”
The Hoosiers presented Trump with a No. 47 Indiana football jersey, a signed football, and an IU helmet. Standout players Jamari Sharpe and Charlie Becker also spoke at the event.
Sharpe -- who intercepted Miami's final pass to seal the championship -- thanked Cignetti, saying, "I didn't know if I was going to stay [at Indiana], but I stayed, and I'm glad I stayed because we won a national championship."
Alongside several members of the Indiana congressional delegation and the president's cabinet, U.S. Senator Jim Banks, R-Ind., was in attendance to see his alma mater’s championship-winning team.
He told ABC News the historic feat “never gets old.”
"Indiana University's championship season showed the whole country what Hoosier grit is all about,” he said, adding, “These student-athletes carried themselves with real class all season and made Indiana proud.”
Once the losingest program in Division I football history, the president lauded the team’s 2025 run as a “legendary” story.
“It's a very unusual story: we have a lot of teams where they win and they keep winning and they keep winning,” he said. “This is a team that came out from really a program that was a basketball program largely and now it's a great, great, football program.”
Pointing at Coach Cignetti, the president commended him on his confidence and the team’s dominant year.
“Never bet against a guy like this,” Trump said. “I'm telling you, never bet against a guy like Curt.”
