Curt Cignetti and Indiana were deep in enemy territory, but it was 4th and 5 late in the fourth quarter, and the Hoosiers needed a touchdown.
It was going to take a little extra to push the ball across the goal line.
Okay, no, we aren’t talking about an actual football game here.
We’re talking Fernando Mendoza. You may have heard of him.
Back in December of 2024, upstart Indiana found itself in a bidding war for the Cal transfer quarterback.
And IU AD Scott Dolson found himself in a suite at Notre Dame Stadium with multi-billionaire Mark Cuban.
It turns out it wasn’t the worst thing in the world Indiana was down big that night in the College Football Playoff first round against Notre Dame.
As the margin on the scoreboard expanded, the conversations in the suite began to drift.
“It all started, really, at the Notre Dame playoff game the year before, when we were losing,” Cuban told Front Office Sports. “I was in the suite with the AD Scott Dolson and (IU President) Pam Whitten, and we sucked (in that game). We were getting blown out from the beginning.”
“First thing I said to Scott was, ‘Well, at least this year you’re not having to look for another football coach’, because that was kind of a time-honored tradition at Indiana.”
No, Indiana was definitely not in need of a new head coach following their 2024 campaign.
But a quarterback, yeah, that was going to be essential after Kurtis Rourke exhausted his eligibility.
As everyone knows by now, Indiana had an in with Mendoza, with his younger brother Alberto already on the team in Bloomington.
And Cuban said he already knew Alberto, who would sit behind the Miami Heat bench and talk to Cuban about all things IU when the Dallas Mavericks were in town.
But Fernando was wavering — and even at one point had decided to go to Georgia but couldn’t connect with head coach Kirby Smart.
Dolson needed an assist from Cuban to get IU across the goal line with Fernando.
“He’s like, ‘We’ve got this quarterback that we really, really like that we think would be great. We just need a little bit more,” Cuban said. “I asked, ‘How much is a little bit?’ And so he told me, and I said, ‘OK, we’re on a roll, so I’ll put up the money to get this quarterback.'”
How much was required of Cuban to seal the deal?
That part remains a secret.
“They needed … enough, yeah,” a smiling Cuban said.
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