For every winner, there’s a runner-up. And unfortunately for Diego Pavia, he was elected to play second fiddle to Fernando Mendoza, who became the first Heisman trophy winner in the history of Indiana football. The Vanderbilt Commodore received 189 first-place votes to Mendoza’s 643, but with 352 second-place votes, he was still the consensus favorite over the rest of his peers.
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Factor in the podcast circuit and all of the other additional press that Pavia garnered throughout his own Heisman campaign, and that helps to ensure that his senior season was a profitable one. So even though he wasn’t able to rival Mendoza in votes, Pavia is at least managing to do so in terms of dollars.
The 2025 Heisman trophy winner is currently netting $2.6 million in NIL dealings, making him the proud owner of the seventh-largest NIL portfolio in all of college sports. Thanks to those aforementioned perks, however, the 24-year-old senior is close to catching him.
Even though Pavia’s portfolio currently ranks outside of the top-10, he’s still earning $2.5 million in NIL dealings for himself, putting him on par with the likes of Ohio State’s Julian Sayin and Nebraska’s Dylan Raiola. And it’s also worth noting his budding presence on social media as well.
The Vanderbilt QB is boasting more than 20,000 followers on X to the 3,600 who follow Mendoza’s publicly protected account. With his partying and fashion-filled videos in the lead-up to the Heisman trophy ceremony, he garnered a sizable following for himself on TikTok as well.
Simply put, there’s a lot of momentum for Pavia to take advantage of here, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see him succeed at a commercial level throughout the coming months.
Pavia will take to the field as a Commodore for the last time on December 31st when Vanderbilt takes on the no. 23rd-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida, in the ReliaQuest Bowl. Despite his rejection from both the College Football Playoff selection committee and the Heisman voters, the senior intends to leave it all out on the field on Wednesday afternoon and give the SEC one final performance to remember.
