Mendoza and Cristobal: How High School Teammates Could Meet Again on College Football’s Biggest Stage

Somewhere in the halls of Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, there’s a photograph that tells the story better than words ever could. Two teenage boys in Explorers blue, grinding through practice on the offensive line in the mid-1980s.

One would become a two-time national champion and one of college football’s most respected coaches. The other would become a pediatric emergency room director, saving lives while quietly raising a son who would one day win the Heisman Trophy.

Mario Cristobal and Fernando Mendoza Sr. were teammates at Columbus. Tonight, as the Peach Bowl kicks off in Atlanta, that 40-year-old connection could produce one of the most remarkable storylines in College Football Playoff history.

The Connection Between Mario Cristobal and Fernando Mendoza

“There’s obviously a backstory there: I’ve known the Mendoza family. I played with the dad as high school teammates,” Cristobal told reporters back in October 2024, before his Miami Hurricanes faced Fernando Mendoza Jr. and Cal in Berkeley.

The words seemed almost casual then, a footnote to a regular-season ACC matchup. Now they read like foreshadowing.
Christopher Columbus High School has produced its share of football talent over the decades — Brian Griese, Alonzo Highsmith, Mike Shula — but the parallel journeys of Cristobal and Mendoza Sr. carry a different weight.

Both Cuban-American kids from Miami. Both linemen. Both shaped by the private Catholic school’s emphasis on faith, academics, and brotherhood.

Cristobal went on to star at the University of Miami, winning national championships in 1989 and 1991 before building a coaching career that took him from FIU to Alabama to Oregon and back home.

Mendoza Sr. took a different path, rowing crew at Brown University before pursuing medicine. He’s now the pediatric emergency director at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.

“I play in front of thousands,” Fernando Jr. has said of his father’s influence, “but he handles life-and-death situations every day. That teaches you how to stay calm, no matter what.”

A Miami Homecoming Awaits the Mendoza’s

The timing borders on cinematic. Cristobal returned to Miami in December 2021, driven by the pull of his alma mater and the city that raised him. He spoke then of wearing the helmet, of wearing the uniform, of obligations that transcend career opportunities.

Three seasons later, his Hurricanes have punched their ticket to the national championship game — the first since 2001 — with a 31-27 Fiesta Bowl win over Ole Miss on Thursday night. The championship will be played at Hard Rock Stadium. Miami’s home field.

Yet the opponent remains undetermined. Top-seeded Indiana faces No. 5 Oregon tonight, a Big Ten rematch with everything on the line.

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If the Hoosiers win behind their Heisman-winning quarterback — a kid who grew up 20 minutes from Columbus, who wore the same Explorers colors his father once wore — college football will have delivered a narrative almost too neat to be true.

Fernando Mendoza Jr. leading Indiana against his father’s high school teammate in the biggest game of the year. In Miami. At the stadium where Cristobal’s Hurricanes play every Saturday. Against a coach who remembers the family name from before the quarterback was even born.

Mario, Mendoza, and the Columbus Connection

When CBS News Miami spoke with Cristobal after Fernando Jr.’s Heisman win last month, the connection was front and center. “This certainly was a tremendous job by him and his team,” Cristobal said of the player who has led Indiana to a perfect 14-0 record.

“It is an awesome family, and they are awesome people, and it was a well-deserved award.”

The sentiment carries no competitive hedging. Cristobal genuinely knows these people. He lined up next to Fernando Mendoza Sr. during practices at Columbus when both were teenagers, learning the game under coach Dennis Lavelle.

The school held a celebration for Fernando Jr.’s Heisman win in December, students wearing Indiana red beneath the digital billboard, cheering for a Columbus graduate who made history 2,000 miles from home.

Fernando Jr. was part of the Columbus programme that won a state championship in 2019 and reached the state semifinals in 2021. His younger brother Alberto, now his backup at Indiana, led the Explorers to back-to-back state titles in 2022 and 2023.

The Mendoza name is woven into the school’s recent football history as thoroughly as Cristobal’s is woven into its past.

Cristobal and Mendoza are Connected by Cuban-American Heritage

Both families fled Castro’s Cuba. Both built lives in Miami’s tight-knit Cuban-American community, where football was never the obvious path. Baseball, boxing, yes, but American football?

“My idea was to be able to broaden horizons and show different Cuban communities that it is not just about boxing and baseball — sports we excel at and that I love — but we can also play American football and any other discipline we want to pursue,” Fernando Jr. said recently.

Cristobal has spoken similarly of his parents, Luis and Clara, who came to the United States in 1968 and settled in Miami’s Coral Terrace neighbourhood. “My parents, may they rest in peace, they didn’t even know what a scholarship was,” he said.

“They were Cuban Americans that came over and found a way and tried to make a living.”

At his Heisman acceptance speech, Fernando Jr. closed by addressing his grandparents in Spanish, “Por el amor y el sacrificio de mis padres y abuelos, los quiero mucho. Desde todo mi corazón les doy las gracias.” For the love and sacrifice of my parents and grandparents, I love you a lot. From all my heart, I thank you.

The words could have come from either family.

Oregon Stands Between Mendoza and Cristobal Meeting in Miami

Indiana enters the Peach Bowl as a 3.5-point favourite, having already beaten Oregon 30-20 in Eugene back in October. The Hoosiers demolished Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl. Curt Cignetti’s programme, once the butt of Big Ten jokes, is two wins from perfection and a first national championship.

Mendoza Jr. has been the driving force: 3,172 passing yards, 36 touchdowns, and only six interceptions. The transformation from three-star Cal transfer to Heisman winner represents one of the great individual seasons in recent memory.

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His father, speaking to CBS Sports after the Big Ten Championship win over Ohio State, deflected talk of accolades, insisting any recognition reflected the team’s collective effort.

That humility sounds familiar. Dave Dunn, Columbus’s current head football coach, remembers Fernando Jr. eating lunch in his office every day just to go over film, to study opponents, to find any edge.

The kid who wasn’t good enough for Miami’s scholarship offer — “we might take you as a walk-on,” they told him — is now two wins from breaking Hurricane hearts in their own backyard.

If Oregon wins tonight, the storyline changes. Dan Lanning’s Ducks are battle-tested, coming off a dominant 23-0 shutout of Texas Tech, and Dante Moore has the arm to keep any game close.

Yet even then, Cristobal wouldn’t entirely escape his past — he coached at Oregon from 2017-2021, building the programme before abruptly leaving for Miami.

Still, an Indiana victory would produce something rarer. Not just a championship game, but a reunion. Not just a football matchup, but a test of bonds forged decades ago in the hallways and practice fields of a Catholic high school in Miami.

On Jan. 19, the College Football Playoff National Championship will kick off at Hard Rock Stadium. Cristobal will be there, coaching the programme he played for, in the city where he grew up, at the stadium his team calls home. He’ll be chasing Miami’s first national title in 24 years, trying to restore a dynasty that once seemed permanent.

And if Indiana gets past Oregon tonight, Mendoza Sr. will be somewhere in those stands, watching his son try to complete an undefeated season against his old teammate. The kid from Columbus against the coach from Columbus. The emergency room doctor’s son against the offensive lineman who blocked alongside his father.

Somewhere in Miami, that old photograph still exists. Two teenage boys in Explorers blue, before either knew what the future would hold. Before one won championships and the other saved lives. Before their paths diverged for 40 years, only to converge again on the biggest stage college football has to offer.