Rece Davis: Diego Pavia’s behavior ‘made me regret my Heisman vote’

It’s an all-too-common experience for the hotshot college football quarterback to rise too far, too fast, and eventually spiral downward in a controversy of their own making.

Rarely, however, do you see it happen over the course of 24 hours.

Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia was a darling of the 2025 college football season, leading the perennial basement-dwelling Commodores to a 10-2 record and coming close to a College Football Playoff berth. After throwing for 3,192 yards and accounting for 36 touchdowns (many of which he did the Heisman pose after), Pavia was invited to the Heisman Trophy ceremony as a finalist.

Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza won the award for college football’s best player, and Pavia finished in second place. After the ceremony, the Vandy QB let loose on social media, calling out Heisman voters.

“F-All THE VOTERS,” Pavia wrote Saturday night on Instagram with a thumbs-down emoji, “BUT…..FAMILY FOR LIFE.”

Pavia apologized the following day, saying he “didn’t handle those emotions well at all and did not represent myself the way I wanted to.”

ESPN’s Rece Davis appreciates the apology, but admitted on the latest edition of the College GameDay Podcast that he regrets casting his Heisman vote for him.

“Heisman gets a lot of talk, and I don’t want to wrap this up by piling on Diego Pavia because he apologized for his post-Heisman behavior and understandably so,” Davis said. “I didn’t feel like he owed the voters an apology. He can say whatever he wants to them. As a voter, I saw some people who took umbrage with that but I did not. He could say what he wants.”

“But the one thing that his behavior, even with the apology included and accepted, did for me was that it made me regret my Heisman vote. I voted for Diego Pavia because I know what the history of Vanderbilt is. I thought he was the most dynamic player. I’m predisposed in Heisman voting to vote for guys who create ‘wow’ moments.”

Davis later said this was the second time he had regretted his Heisman vote, though the other instance was different.

“I’ve voted for the Heisman for 20-something years,” he said. “I’ve only regretted my vote two times: One time it was because of on the field and I was unfair in my judgment toward a person. In my effort to be fair, I ended up being unfair to the person I should have voted for. This one was different. I regretted the vote because after Pavia’s behavior in the aftermath, I was like ‘Man, I’m glad he didn’t win.’ I’m glad he didn’t win. That’s not the way you should feel about a player as great as Pavia is on the field.”

Davis was the only Heisman voter to respond to Pavia. Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread penned a column about why he voted the Vanderbilt QB second, saying his reaction was a “punk move”  that Pavia is “Old enough to know better. And old enough to handle some criticism.”