Tag Archives: AP

Fernando Mendoza Becomes First Heisman Trophy Winner of Cuban Descent

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Fernando Mendoza is celebrating a historic win…

The 22-year-old Cuban American college football player, the quarterback for the Indiana Hoosiers was announced as the 91st winner of the Heisman Memorial Trophy during ABC’s 2025 Heisman Trophy on Saturday, December 13,

Fernando Mendoza

Mendoza, who received 2,362 points, including 643 first-place votes, becomes the first college football player of Cuban descent to claim the Heisman and only the third Latino winner in the award’s history.

Vanderbilt Commodores quarterback Diego Pavia, who is of Spanish and Mexican descent, finished second with 1,435 points and 189 first-place votes.

Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love was third with 719 points and 46 first-place votes and Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin was fourth with 432 points and eight first-place votes.

Mendoza, a redshirt junior, is Indiana’s first Heisman winner. Indiana’s previous highest finisher was 1989 runner-up Anthony Thompson.

The 6-foot-5, 225-pounder from Miami, Fla., is the 2025 Big Ten Offensive Player and Quarterback of the Year and an All-Big Ten first-team quarterback who led Indiana to a 2025 Big Ten Championship victory over Ohio State and a No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff.

Mendoza, in his first year at Indiana after transferring from California, led the Hoosiers to a 13-0 record and the program’s first-ever No. 1 ranking.

He completed 226-of-316 passes for 2,980 yards and a nation-leading 33 TD passes while rushing for 240 yards and another six scores.

He is second nationally in total touchdowns accounted for (39) and in quarterback rating (181.39) and is sixth in completion percentage (71.5). Mendoza’s 33 TD passes are a school season record as are his five games this season with four or more scoring passes.

He threw for a season-high 332 yards and four scores in a win over Michigan State. He completed better than 85% of his passes four times this year and threw at least one TD pass in each game outside of the season-opener.

Mendoza was named the AP Player of the Year earlier this week and also won the Maxwell, Walter Camp and Davey O’Brien Awards.

Mendoza, whose passer rating of 181.39 is 10th-best among Heisman winners, is the seventh player in the last nine years to win the award after transferring and the fourth in a row. He is the sixth Heisman winner to hail from Florida and the second in a row. He is the first winner from a current Big Ten team since USC’s Caleb Williams in 2022.

Mendoza, who earned his undergraduate business degree in Berkeley last year and is pursuing a Master’s at Indiana, is the 39th quarterback to win the award. He is only the second Heisman winner to wear No. 15, following Tim Tebow (2007).

Pavia is Vanderbilt’s highest finisher ever. The next highest came in the third year of the award when Commodore All-American center Carl Hinkle finished seventh in 1937.

Love is Notre Dame’s highest finisher in the Heisman voting since Manti Te’o was the 2012 runner-up. Sayin is Ohio State’s highest finisher since 2023 when Marvin Harrison Jr. was fourth.

The 2025 Heisman Trophy ballots went out to 930 electors, which includes 870 members of the media, 59 living Heisman winners and one overall fan vote. All ballots were submitted electronically to the independent accountants at Deloitte.

Rounding out the top 10 finishers were fifth-place Texas Tech senior linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, sixth-place Ohio State sophomore wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, seventh-place Georgia junior quarterback Gunner Stockton, eighth-place Mississippi senior quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, ninth-place Ohio State junior safety Caleb Downs and 10th-place Georgia Tech senior quarterback Haynes King.

Carlos Alcaraz Defeats Grigor Dimitrov at Queen’s Club Championships to Reach First-Ever ATP Semifinals on Grass

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Carlos Alcaraz is kicking grass…

The 20-year-old Spanish tennis phenom, the tournament’s top seed, reached his first-ever ATP semifinals on grass when he defeated former champion Grigor Dimitrov 6-4, 6-4 at the Queen’s Club Championships on Friday.

Dimitrov, the 2014 winner who came through qualifying this year, was his own worst enemy. He had a better first serve and more break chances but hurt himself with 16 unforced errors and seven double faults.

“Grigor is a top player on any surface, but especially on grass. But I played really well from the beginning to the last ball,” Alcaraz said.

“I’m a guy who learns quite fast and I’m feeling really comfortable playing on grass.”

Alcaraz also improved to 8-0 this year in quarterfinals.

In the semifinals, he’ll face Sebastian Korda, who into his first grass semifinal as well.

Korda became the first American to reach the Queen’s semis in 11 years after beating Cameron Norrie 6-4, 7-6 (1).

The Associated Press Names Miranda Its Entertainer of the Year

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Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t just the man of the hour… He’s the man of the last 8,000-plus hours.

The 36-year-old Puerto Rican actor, playwright, composer, rapper, and writer, bested Beyonce, Adele and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, among others, to earn the honor of The Associated Press Entertainer of the Year, voted by members of the news cooperative and AP entertainment reporters.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights. Miranda has had a banner year, winning a Pulitzer Prize and a pair of Tony Awards.

The Hamilton writer-composer also earned a Golden Globe nomination, won the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, wrote music for a top movie, and inspired a best-selling book, a best-selling album of Hamilton covers and a popular PBS documentary.

“There’s been more than a little good luck in the year itself and the way it’s unfolded,” Miranda said after being told of the honor. “I continue to try to work on the things I’ve always wanted to work on and try to say yes to the opportunities that I’d kick myself forever if I didn’t jump at them.”

Miranda joins the list of previous AP Entertainer of the Year winners who in recent years have included Adele, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence, Lady Gaga, Tina Fey and Betty White.

The animated Disney juggernaut Frozen captured the prize in 2014, and Star Wars won last year. (Miranda wrote one of the songs in The Force Awakens.)

When he hosted Saturday Night Live in October, he somewhat tongue-in-cheek acknowledged the rarity of having a theater composer as host, saying: “Most of you watching at home have no idea who I am.”

But that has definitely changed… Miranda was virtually everywhere in popular culture this year — stage, film, TV, music and politics — engaging on social media as he went. Like a lyric he wrote for Alexander Hamilton, it seemed at times that the non-stop Miranda was working as if he was “running out of time.”

Julio D. Diaz, of the Pensacola News Journal, said Miranda “made the whole world sing, dance and think. Coupled with using his prestige to become involved in important sociopolitical issues, there was no greater or more important presence in entertainment in 2016.”

Among the things Miranda did this year are asking the U.S. Congress to help dig Puerto Rico out of its debt crisis, getting an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, performing at a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Broadway, lobbying to stop gun violence in America, and teaming up with Jennifer Lopez on the benefit single “Love Make the World Go Round.”

He and his musical Hamilton won 11 Tony Awards in June, but perhaps his deepest contribution that night was tearfully honoring those killed hours before at an Orlando nightclub with a beautiful sonnet: “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside,” he said. “Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”

He started the year onstage in the Broadway hit Hamilton (which in 2015 had won a Grammy and earned Miranda a MacArthur genius grant) and ended it with a Golden Globe nomination for writing the song “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana, which was on top of the box office for three weeks this month, earning $165 million.

“I’ve been jumping from thing to thing and what’s been thrilling is to see the projects that happen very quickly kind of exploding side-by-side with the projects I’ve been working on for years,” Miranda said.

Though theater fans have long cherished his fluency in both Stephen Sondheim and Tupac, Hamilton helped Miranda break into the mainstream in 2016. The groundbreaking, biographical hip-hop show tells the true story of an orphan immigrant from the Caribbean who rises to the highest ranks of American society, performed by a young African-American and Latino cast.

The cast went to the White House in March to perform songs from the show for the first family and to answer questions from school children. A version of the show opened in Chicago in October and a production is slated to land in California next year and in London soon.

Erin O’Neill of The Marietta Times said Miranda dominated entertainment news this year but, more importantly, “opened a dialogue about government, the founding of our country and the future of politics in America.”

There’s more Miranda to come in 2017, including filming Disney‘s Mary Poppins Returns with Emily Blunt (due out Christmas 2018) and an ambitious TV and film adaptation of the fantasy trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle.

“I’m back in a planting mode after a harvest,” Miranda said, laughing.