Billionaire Indiana University alum Mark Cuban is taking credit for the biggest football recruiting coup in recent memory.
Prior to 2024, his Hoosiers were quite literally the biggest losers in college football history, having accumulated more defeats than any other school.
Now, entering the 2026 season, they’re coming off their first national championship with a combined record of 27-2 under third-year coach Curt Cignetti.
It was Cignetti who built the foundation in Bloomington, where the Hoosiers had gone just 3-9 under Tom Allen in 2023. But as Cuban has now revealed, it was he who added the finishing touch by paying the name, image and likeness (NIL) tab for California transfer Fernando Mendoza, considered one of the top quarterbacks in the portal.
‘I’ll put up the money, and we can go get Fernando, and the rest is history,’ the Dallas Mavericks minority owner told Front Office Sports’ Portfolio Players in an upcoming episode.
Cuban is describing the kind of pay-for-play scenario that is now commonplace in the NCAA, which previously banned NIL deals and direct payments to student athletes.
Indiana University alum Mark Cuban is taking credit for recruiting Fernando Mendoza
Fernando Mendoza (15) is interviewed after Indiana beat Miami in the national title game
But even after the NCAA and congress paved the way for boosters and schools to pay players, Cuban initially resisted. As he explained to FOS, his donations to IU had been strictly for academic purposes until IU’s first College Football Playoff berth in 2024.
With the help of IU athletic director Scott Dolson and university president Pam Whitten, Cuban was convinced to lure Mendoza from Cal, where he’d played well for two years, to Bloomington, where the Hoosiers were coming off the best season in program history.
‘The first thing I said to Scott was, “Well, at least this year you’re not having to look for another football coach,”‘ Cuban told FOS. ‘Because that was kind of a time-honored tradition in Indiana, always looking for a football coach. And so he’s like, “Yeah, that’s the positive.”
Mendoza’s star has continued to ascend as he went first overall to the Las Vegas Raiders
‘[Dolson]’s like, “we’ve got this quarterback that we really, really like that we think would be great in [Cignetti’s] system, we just need a little bit more,”‘ Cuban added. ‘I’m like, “How much is a little bit?” And so he told me, and I’m like, “OK, you know, we’re on a roll, I’ll put up the money to get this quarterback.”‘
And it wasn’t just money.
Cuban also had some history with the Miami-based Mendoza family after interacting with Fernando’s brother and future backup, Alberto, during some Mavs-Heat games in South Florida.
‘I knew [Alberto], who was already on the team, was a Heat fan, and he would sit behind the Miami bench, and when I would come to go to Mavs-Heat games, he was like, “Oh yeah, I’m [going] go to IU and da da da,”‘ Cuban said. ‘So we met. And so I’m like, “OK, I’ll put up the money, and we can go get Fernando, and the rest is history.”‘
Cuban knew Mendoza’s brother and backup, Alberto (left), which helped with the deal
Mendoza would go on to pass for 3,535 yards and an NCAA-best 41 touchdowns en route to a perfect 16-0 season, the program’s first national championship, and Heisman Trophy honors.
Since then, he’s been drafted first-overall by the Las Vegas Raiders and is expected to compete with veteran Kirk Cousins for the starting job in Sin City.
As for his exactly how much Cuban paid to bring Mendoza to Bloomington, Yahoo! Sports reported that figure to be $2.6 million last year. It’s not clear if Cuban paid that entire figure or if that was his entire donation to the football program.
Furthermore, it’s unclear if Cuban paid for other players to attend IU.
‘Let’s just say [IU is] happier this year than last year,’ Cuban told FOS in January.
