{"id":445710,"date":"2025-12-14T04:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/445710\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T04:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:06:11","slug":"diego-pavia-finishes-second-in-heisman-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/445710\/","title":{"rendered":"Diego Pavia Finishes Second in Heisman Voting"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014<\/strong>\u202fVanderbilt\u00a0quarterback Diego Pavia\u00a0finished second in voting for the 91st\u00a0Heisman Trophy, as announced during Saturday\u2019s\u00a0award ceremony\u00a0at\u00a0New York\u2019s Lincoln Center. Recently honored as SEC Offensive Player of the Year after leading the Commodores to historic success in the regular season, Pavia was Vanderbilt\u2019s first-ever finalist for the Heisman, which is given annually to the nation\u2019s best college football player.<\/p>\n

Pavia\u00a0finished second in a four-way race with finalists\u00a0Jeremiyah Love, Fernando Mendoza and Julian Sayin, earning\u00a0189\u00a0first-place votes. Mendoza won the award, with Love and Sayin finishing third and fourth, respectively. The only previous Vanderbilt student-athlete to earn any Heisman votes was College Football Hall of Fame member Carl Hinkle, who finished seventh in the 1937 balloting.<\/p>\n

Inspired and energized by his charismatic play and infectious confidence, and in conjunction with an enhanced fan experience made possible by the university\u2019s ongoing\u00a0Vandy United<\/a> campaign, Vanderbilt has sold out FirstBank Stadium 11 times since Pavia took\u00a0over as starting quarterback at the start of the 2024 season.\u00a0With a win in its bowl game, Vanderbilt can match its best two-year win total in school history.<\/p>\n

Entering postseason play, Pavia stands second nationally in total offense (334.8 yards per game), is third with an average of 9.39 yards per pass attempt and ranks fourth with a 171.5 pass efficiency rating. Along with pacing the SEC in each of those categories, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, native also tops the league and is among the top 10 in the country in touchdown passes (27) and completion percentage (71.2 percent). Also Vanderbilt\u2019s leader with 826 rushing yards, in addition to nine rushing touchdowns, he guided the Commodores to four wins against ranked SEC opponents.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the\u00a0ReliaQuest\u00a0Bowl against Iowa on New Year\u2019s Eve, Pavia already led the Commodores to the most single-season wins in school history, their\u00a0highest\u00a0ranking (No. 9) in the Associated Press Top 25 since 1937\u00a0and back-to-back bowl appearances for the first time in more than a decade. In addition to his individual SEC award and All-SEC honors, Pavia recently received the 2025 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award\u00ae, which is presented to the nation\u2019s top upper-class quarterback who excels on the field, in the classroom and in the community. He is the first Vanderbilt recipient in the award\u2019s 38-year history.<\/p>\n

Pavia is a contender for some of college football\u2019s most acclaimed honors. He is a finalist for Manning Award and was a finalist for Walter Camp Player of the Year honors.<\/p>\n

Individually, Pavia leads the SEC and is among the top 10 in the country in six statistical categories: total offense, passing efficiency, passing touchdowns, completion percentage, yards per pass attempt and points responsible for. His efforts have helped the Vandy offense lead the nation in yards per play and team passing efficiency. The Dores also lead all NCAA FBS programs in points per play and rank second among Power 4 schools in points per drive. The team\u2019s 39.4 points per game are the program\u2019s best since 1915, and the unit is No. 1 in ESPN\u2019s FPI ratings.<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt fans can watch Pavia take the field one more time for Vanderbilt in the ReliaQuest Bowl. NCC members interested in tickets should visit the postseason information hub<\/a>, while all other fans should visit the ReliaQuest Bowl website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014\u202fVanderbilt\u00a0quarterback Diego Pavia\u00a0finished second in voting for the 91st\u00a0Heisman Trophy, as announced during Saturday\u2019s\u00a0award ceremony\u00a0at\u00a0New York\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":445711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[193243,2985,177751,177750,177749,177752,3259,1318,36018,1317,1315,1316,205241,9661,62,67,132,68,177757,50643,177758,177759,205240,177753,15648,177747,177748,177756,177755,177754],"class_list":{"0":"post-445710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-clark-lea","9":"tag-commodores","10":"tag-commodores-baseball","11":"tag-commodores-basketball","12":"tag-commodores-football","13":"tag-commodores-soccer","14":"tag-diego-pavia","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-heisman-trophy","17":"tag-ncaa","18":"tag-ncaa-football","19":"tag-ncaafootball","20":"tag-reliaquest-bowl","21":"tag-sec-football","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-vanderbilt-athletics","27":"tag-vanderbilt-commodores","28":"tag-vanderbilt-commodores-baseball-roster","29":"tag-vanderbilt-commodores-football-roster","30":"tag-vanderbilt-football","31":"tag-vanderbilt-stadium","32":"tag-vanderbilt-university","33":"tag-vanderbilt-university-athletics","34":"tag-vuc","35":"tag-vuc-baseball","36":"tag-vuc-basketball","37":"tag-vuc-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}