The Josh Innes Show - Pavia v. Heisman Voters

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

I think we are going to look back ten years from now and barely remember who won the Heisman. I am losing interest in college football. It's been happening for a few years. For me, I notice subtle changes in my passion. I anticipate people are dealing with similar issues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Headline reads, Diego Pavia owes Heisman voters no apology. He owes Fernando Mendoza one. So I don't know if you've seen, but some of these people who voted for Diego Pavia are now saying that they're ashamed that they voted for Diego Pavia or that they wish they could take their vote back. Like I think, what's his name? Who's the guy that hosts Game Day, whatever that dude's name is? I think he was one of them because the guy basically said F the voters, right?

So, I actually have not read this story. So let's read this story from USA Today here. So let's do that after these commercial messages. All right. So let's see what we're working with here. Diego Pavia reacted to his second place Heisman trophy finish as only he would. After Indiana's Fernando Mendoza won the award, things quickly got turnt. F all the voters, Pavia, Vanderbilt's quarterback wrote on social media.

Hey, he's talking about us. We're the voters. On this edition of SEC Football and Filtered, a podcast from the USA Today Network, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's see. So this is including John Adams, a guy who writes college football stuff, reveal their Heisman trophy ballots. F all the voters. How do we feel about that? Adam says I've heard worse.

When you've worked in the business as long as I have, you've heard it all. Pavia's social media posts barely registers, and I take no offense to Pavia's. Barb directed at voters. Anyway, who says sports writers should be absolved from criticism, not me? Well, that's the other thing. And I understand that these awards have to be voted on because they can't be, you know, ordained by God, right? So they have to have voters on them. But at the end of the day, it's just people with opinions. And what do we talk about with people who have opinions? People who have opinions are human and humans have what? Bias is, correct. Pavia's reaction, though, took some of the spotlight away from Mendoza. That's where Pavia aired. It's not that he came at

media members who vote for the Heism, we dish out criticism. We can take it too. But Pavia inappropriately hijacked the attention from Mendoza and the other finalists with his outburst. Some might say Pavia's reaction won't impress NFL evaluators. Well, neither will his height. The social media outburst is in line with his career. He'll be the perfect WWE heel. Okay. So his vote, this guy did vote for Pavia, number one. Let's see what the other guy did. Topmire also voted for Pavia. Here's the thing. I'm not going to keep digging into this story here. First off, Pavia is not going to be an NFL quarterback anyway. There's just nothing going for him that would make him a successful NFL quarterback. The guy made the joke about his hype, but that's true.

I don't believe Pavia has much hope of being an NFL quarterback. But like he's a big enough star that if one of these other leagues survives, he'll play in there. It'll be like Johnny Mansell, whatever. First off, these media people do get their feelings. heard. Like I was reading, what the hell's the dude's name that hosts Game Day? He was like, I wish I could take my vote back or whatever. Well, the vote isn't about who's the bigger dickhead. The vote is about who the better player was on the field. And Pavia was the better player on the field. To the point about hijacking the moment, right? Like, we saw the draft was hijacked last year by Shudor Sanders. The number one pick was Cam Ward. No one talked about Cam Ward. And I never heard

anybody talking about a hijacking then, right? Like I never heard when Cam Ward was number one overall and no one talked about him. The second he was drafted, the whole conversation is when is Shadur Sanders going to be drafted? Because everybody wanted to suckle off the Sanders clickbait teat, and they did. And they kept it rolling. So no one talked about that, right? And Pavia has Sanders qualities. He certainly generates the kind of response that Sanders does. He's controversial, whether on purpose or not. There's a bunch of factors that go in with this guy. That said, the Mendoza angle on this. Mendoza will go down as probably the most nondescript, uninteresting, forgettable

Heisman trophy winner in recent memory. Actually, you know who would actually probably go even higher than that is Devante Smith, who won it from Alabama, like a wide receiver winning that award, like a quiet wide receiver winning the Heisman. Like, I mean, Jaden Daniels was a, you know, you had Joe Burrow, like you've had quarterbacks, flashier quarterbacks, whatever. I would say that the least interesting quarterback, the dullest quarterback, the person that in 10 years people aren't going to remember it all is Fernando Mendoza. Bless his heart.

Like, this might be the worst year in the history of the Heisman trophy. I don't have all of the years finalists or all the finalists from years past in front of me. But when we look back 10 years from now, because I don't believe Fernando Mendoza is going to be a good NFL quarterback. Maybe I'll be wrong. Again, I bet on that guy a lot. Back when he was at Cal, I used to. Jilly actually discovered this guy. You want to hear something funny about the degenerate level of my wife and how she does things?

I'll tell you two people that Jilly used to bet on at previous schools and nailed it every time. Fernando Mendoza at Cal and Diego Pavia when he was at New Mexico, or New Mexico State, or wherever the hell he was. Jilly basically discovered those two people. She's like, I'm betting on these guys, like two, three years ago and crushed it. Jilly was a goddess of finding these people. I don't know how she does it, but she does. She has a gift. Problem is she doesn't know or think she has a gift.

Therefore, she never shares her gift with people, but she should because she has an amazing gift, and that is of discovering these rando players that eventually becomes stars. She's like, like, you know, if this were a movie about like the grizzled old scout, you know, Like, what was that Clint Eastwood movie where he's a baseball scout with Amy Adams? You know, what are you doing with the grizzled old veteran like me? That's jelly. But I think when we look back on the Heisman, we're going to say, holy shit, Fernando Mendoza. And we might start getting more of those because what you're going to start seeing is you're not getting dudes who are staying at schools for extended period of times.

You're getting guys that are popping in for one or two years at particular schools. Thus, you don't really have an opportunity to fall in love with their story and their. rise, right? Like Pavia, like, it's been a fun thing. It's at Vanderbilt. I mean, the biggest thing that's going to come out of this is that Vanderbilt and Indiana had the two Heisman finalists, which is fucking wild. Like, if you, like, no one would ever believe that. Like, if aliens came down, you're like, hey, guess who's the two Heisman finalist? Or if somebody could come back and, like, move forward in time, like, back to the future. Like, Biff Tannen. Let's say Biff Tannen is in Hill Valley, circa 195, and he gets in the DeLorean and goes to

2025, and he's like, well, who are the two Heisman finalists? Well, you know, it's Diego Pavia and Fernando Mendoza. He's like, what, two ethnics? And like, yep, two ethnics. And they went to Indiana and Vanderbilt. You'd be shocked, right? But all that said, to the point of Pavia, like, I don't believe his draft stock has been hurt by being a dipshit saying F the voters and F. Mendoza and all that shit. And F. Indiana. I don't believe that because I don't believe his draft stock was ever going to be high because he's always been kind of a baggage guy. The family is baggage. The brothers are baggage. The hot mom is baggage. And he doesn't have the build. He doesn't have the natural quarterback ability. He's not six foot three. He's not

the guy that you look at as the prototypical quarterback. Everything he's done has been kind of a bizarre thing that it's worked out for him. And it works in college where you can run options and you can do all this shit. It doesn't happen in the pro game that way anymore. That's just not going to work out. So I don't believe he was ever going to be some sort of incredible stud in the NFL, and I don't think he was a highly coveted piece for anybody in the NFL. So might it knock him down a peg, might someone decide to, you know, not draft him in the fifth round now, maybe. But the guy was never going to be a high draft pick. It was never going to work out that way. So the flipping the bird to the media people, while it might upset some of them, I don't believe it has any impact

and what Diego Pavia is going to be. I also don't believe that Mendoza's going to be great. I think the guy can go out there and sling it in college. Maybe I'm wrong here. There's something about his demeanor that I find off-putting. And I don't know how to fully describe it. He's just too white bread. He's like a nerdier version of Kirk Cousins.

Like Kirk Cousins, who's like, I'm the face of Coles Cash. Cuck Cousins, like even Kirk Cousins has a little bit of teeth to him, you know, there's just something about Pavia, not Pavia, but Mendoza that I'm just kind of like, eh, eh, like I don't believe, like I don't believe he's going to be a big time pro. And when we look back 10 years from now, we look at the Heisman finalists, we may look at 2025 and go, woof, like these are two. And maybe we are, and that's kind of where I was going to is maybe we're getting to a point where the Heisman finalists are just going to be forgettable people because there's no story with them. You know, they just bounce from place to place. And if they find a place where they're hot for a year and they're a highsman finalist, I think that's a bigger picture issue with college sports. It's a bigger picture issue with college football, particularly where, and I think it's what's turning off a lot of people is the constant mobility, the constant going from school to school, the constant NIL. And like, we're seeing stories now where guys are resigning year to year and like doing posts about how, hey, running back such and such,

just resigned another one year deal like they're treating them like their pros, which is fine. But I think that's part of what's turned people off. And I think we're about to hit an era where you start to see like the Heisman meaning very little to people. You know, you start to see the national champion meaning very little to people. Because the sport, while it's not struggling financially and people aren't not watching, like I was talking with Meltzer about that. I was like, I don't think I'm alone here and that the sport kind of turns me off a little bit now. And he goes, well, are the ratings down? I'm like, no, probably not. But they will be. I think at some point people are just going to get tired of it. They're going to get bored with.

And when they get bored with it, with the constant mobility and the NIL and all this shit, and I'm not saying there shouldn't be NIL, and I'm not saying these guys shouldn't get paid, they should. But I think you're going to get to a point where people are at some point just going to say, yeah, fuck this shit. Like, I don't even know if it's going to be a line in the sand, like we're not going to watch anymore. It's kind of like it is for me.

Gradually, your interest starts to wane and you don't even realize it's happening. And then one minute you're going to sit there and go, I really don't give a shit. Like, I was watching LSU this year and there was just a moment. where I'm like, I don't really give a shit. You know, like, Jillie will be like, we've got to rush home to watch the game. I'm like, honestly, I don't really give a shit. And I think that's what they're going to have to fight. And you might tell me I'm crazy.

And look, I think that, you know, more teams having a chance to win is a good thing. Like, it's not bad that Indiana is now good at football. It's not bad that Arizona State can go to the playoff. It's not bad that the Heisman Trophy semifinalist or runner up comes from Vanderbilt. Those are all good things. but I think what's happened is we've broken the sport to the point that it's so gross and it's so transactional that you don't feel a commitment. You want to believe that the guys who play for your school, even if it's not real, you want to believe that these guys love the school as much as you do and they're passionate about the school in a way that you're passionate about the school, even if it's bullshit. But now nobody even has to pretend to do that anymore.

You know it's just all about who's getting paid the most to go wherever. And that's where it gets kind of just gross feeling, right? I'm not alone there. And while it may not be impacting them now, I think there will come a time where people like me who will still watch college football and bet on college football and enjoy it to an extent are going to just gradually lose interest. And you don't realize you're losing interest. You don't know what's happening, but it's happening. And that's what's been happening to me. That's also been happening to me with sports in general.

But anyway, more to come. Thank you.