12-15-2025, 12:16 PM
(12-15-2025, 12:05 PM)Giants Wrote:(12-15-2025, 09:55 AM)fullmetal Wrote: I didn't realize he was originally committed to play at Yale before flipping to kal. If he could have played at Yale, did Stanford recruit him? If we didn't, what a miss.
From The Athletic article…
His HS senior year GPA was 5.4 (six of seven courses were AP). And his overall HS GPA was 4.86. The Director of his HS Honors Program was quoted as saying, “He didn’t want to be a dumb jock”.
Mendoza was the 250th ranked recruit in Florida his senior year. Didn't play much his junior year, so little track record. He was a two-star recruit (might have been a low three-star on one recruiting service, but I couldn't find it), not recruited by Power 5 schools and was recruited at Yale, Penn and Lehigh. Cal only recruited him when another quarterback (Justyn Martin) decommitted. He had a good arm but wasn't mobile.
Mendoza's coach Dunn was a big believer and tried hard to get a school to recruit him. Dunn had been a D1 recruiting coordinator and knew what he had on his hands. Former NFL QB Bill Musgrave was recruiting at Cal at the time and urged Mendoza to listen to both the Cal and Yale coaches because of Cal's "unique" environment, which was different from Miami. Mendoza said he knew he wanted to be at Cal after one night
Audaces fortuna iuvat