THE VERDICT IS all but in, the coronation all but official.

Fernando Mendoza‘s presence here, in Indianapolis at the combine, is formality over function. It’s late February, two months to go until the 2026 NFL draft, but he has already done the fairytale, done the unthinkable, done the proving. There’s no throw he can make this week that could outdazzle the missile he launched to beat Penn State last fall, with a pair of defenders closing in and the clock ticking down. There’s no strength test he can crush that will tell us more about what he can and will put his body through than the beating he took scrambling for his life to score the touchdown that helped seal Indiana’s first national championship in January.

This thing is so wrapped up, even Mendoza — normally so polished, so tactful — briefly slips. He’s at the podium, fielding questions from a flock of reporters who are so eager to hear what the “likely” top draft pick has to say, they throw elbows to get an inch closer. Mendoza gets asked about Tom Brady — former NFL great, current minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, who are, in turn, owners of the first pick in this year’s draft — and he’s duly effusive.

“Who hasn’t admired Tom Brady?”

“He’s the greatest quarterback of all time by a wide margin.”

“To have,” he says, stops, then tries again. “To potentially have a mentor like that would be pretty impressive.” Underscore, highlight, ALL CAPS that potentially, he all but says out loud.

The rest of his news conference proceeds without a hitch, which is to say, it’s typically Mendozian. He smiles when he listens to questions, he smiles when he answers questions, he smiles when he can’t hear questions, he smiles when there is no more time for questions. He delivers his answers with class-president-acing-his-presentation energy, full of direct eye contact and workshopped points and counterpoints. It’s tempting to look for notecards hidden somewhere discreet on the dais.

This is the pinnacle of the Mendoza experience. He looks like a star quarterback dreamed up in a lab: 6-foot-5, 236, respectable mobility, good arm, rarefied accuracy, all the while sounding like few star quarterbacks who have come before. He is, to hear those in his orbit tell it, the most unfootball-like of adjectives: “goofy.”

So goofy (or “awkward” or “different” or “not normal,” depends on who you ask) that one of his old coaches from his Cal days, Tim Plough, now head coach at UC Davis, has fielded a slew of calls from NFL scouts plying him with questions. Is Mendoza always like this? Is he really like this? Is that going to fly in a room of full-grown adults?

Yes, Plough, tells them. When he is in front of a camera or in front of a locker or in front of the dining room table in Plough’s home, he is always like this. He will talk you and thank you to death. He’ll drill you with questions and take the conversation in winding ways and be courteous to the point of oh, wow, enough already. It’s an acquired taste for some, Plough concedes, but it’s more than that too. The way that Mendoza is? The way he always is?

“It’s Fernando’s superpower.”

THE STORY OF Mendoza’s time in Bloomington, which ended with a cascade of increasingly unfathomable feats — the Heisman crowning, the Big Ten title, the national championship, the 16-0 record, and all this for Indiana (?!) — was a fairytale starring a new kind of hero.

“He’s not …” Plough starts, then pauses, in search of the best way to put this gently. “He’s not the cool guy.”

So what is it, exactly? What uncool boxes is he checking? Corniness? (“Some people might think he is corny, but I think he’s a blessing,” former Hoosiers running back Roman Hemby says.) Nonconformity? (“Everyone gives him a hard time, myself included, that he’s kind of nerdy,” his old high school coach Dave Dunn says.) Stone-cold quirkiness? (“Sometimes he’d just say the stupidest stuff, and you’re like, ‘What are you talkin’ about, dude,'” former Indiana tight end Riley Nowakowski says.) Check, check, check. It’s not a bad package, they all say, just not your typical star (or starting) quarterback package. They sort of love it, in fact.

He calls wide receiver Charlie Becker “Chuck-o-nator,” and calls Nowakowski something “not PG,” and has absolutely no nickname for Curt Cignetti whatsoever, because he does not have a death wish. Cignetti, now going into his third season as Indiana’s head coach, makes Bill Belichick look positively joyful. “Yeah, Cignetti’s not a nicknames guy,” Nowakowski says.

For all his quirks, Mendoza is quick to read a room. Or a sideline. Sometimes Nowakowski would steal a glance at Mendoza and Cignetti conferring in the middle of the game, and snicker at Mendoza’s total, if temporary, transformation. The quarterback had to shift gears to disgruntled grouch in order to game plan.

“Nando would get super serious,” he says. “Silent. It was like a completely different person.”

His eccentricities have an off button. It’s just that Mendoza’s default setting is on, turned all the way up. Which works. It worked at Indiana — killed at Indiana, really. And it will work in the NFL, people think. People hope. People are trying to make sure, which is why Plough fielded all those calls in the first place.

“Is he a little different? Yeah,” one NFL scout says. “Is that going to be a bad thing? I don’t know. The issue that you have is: Can you see him leading your team? Is he going to be the guy that says, ‘You ran the wrong route,’ and then, ‘M-F you,’ in the huddle?”

Spoiler: He will not. On the first play of the Big Ten title game against Ohio State, Nowakowski was meant to block the edge on a rollout, but he got beat and Mendoza got crushed. The man can take a beating, but even he had to leave the game for a play, and Nowakowski spiraled. He just let the soon-to-be Heisman winner get destroyed. Their whole season rides on this one guy being able to play … and now he might not be able to play. The quarterback returned two plays later and waved off Nowakowski’s repeated apologies. Mendoza was still in pain but was also still Mendoza. “Jolly,” Nowakowski says. No M-Fs in sight. “He was like, ‘Dude, I got cracked!'”

But here’s a spoiler addendum: He doesn’t need to be that kind of leader. Back in 2024, Jayden Daniels had one of the best rookie seasons of all time. The coach who oversaw all that history, Dan Quinn, says the biggest misread on what a young, highly drafted quarterback needs to be is this: “The outside thinks he has to be the leader of the team, right when he walks in the locker room. And that’s not the case. Man, learn the system so well you can be counted on in clutch moments. Be a great teammate. Help others get better. But you don’t have to go lead by ripping a guy for being in the wrong alignment.”

If you’re inauthentic, Quinn says, these guys will sniff you out. They don’t want to see their young, albeit transcendent, quarterback force leadership that isn’t there. They just want to see him really freaking care.

Back in early November, when the Hoosiers were already an endearing story but not yet a mythical one, they survived an unexpected battle at Penn State to stay undefeated. Mendoza had 80 yards and less than two minutes left in the game to try to escape State College with a win, and the effort started with a 7-yard sack. From there, though, it was death by gashing: a 22-yard pass, a 12-yard pass, a 29-yard pass, a 17-yard pass, and a 7-yard touchdown pass that was part brass from Mendoza (two Penn State defenders coming in hot) and part wizardry from his wide receiver (Omar Cooper Jr. toe-tapping a millimeter of grass in the back of the end zone).

After the game, Nowakowski found Mendoza sitting on the bench crying. The quarterback had just authored a game-winning, two-minute fire drill, but he couldn’t stop apologizing. He was so sorry because although he led an amazing final drive, he had played only fine the rest of the game, which is why he needed an amazing final drive in the first place. Nowakowski told him to stop; he couldn’t always be perfect, and he was already more perfect than most of those guys out there anyway. Pat Coogan, Indiana’s center, joined in the rescue effort with some gentle ribbing: “Nando, you are so ridiculous.”

Maybe so. But he really freaking cared.

IF MENDOZA WAS emotionally ruined by the thought of less-than-stellar play, it probably had something to do with this: For much of the 2025 season, he went full football whisperer. That ball did what it was told.

On a wet, miserable day last summer in Bloomington, the team was deciding whether it was dismal enough to abandon its 7-on-7. While his teammates deliberated, Mendoza warmed up with the rest of the quarterbacks. There he was, ripping 50-yard dimes with tight spirals as if the ball weren’t soaking wet. Nowakowski sought out Grant Wilson, another quarterback on Indiana’s roster, because he was curious.

Nowakowski: “Can you throw like that in the rain?”

Wilson: “Are you kidding me? No. Of course not.”

Wretched conditions or not, Mendoza had command of the ball — and its precise location. According to ESPN Research, he overthrew or underthrew his receiver on just 7.1% of pass attempts in 2025, the third-lowest rate in the FBS. He completed 54% of his passes on throws 20-plus yards downfield, fourth best. His receivers dropped only 2.6% of his pass attempts last year, sixth lowest among power conferences, which seems like a credit to Mendoza as much as it is to the team’s sure-handed receivers, because if a ball’s placement is perfect, what’s left to do but not drop it? And he developed one of the best back-shoulder throws in the game, which scouts coveted for that pinpoint accuracy and for what it told them about his football acumen.

“His football IQ is so high,” says Mike Giddings, owner of Proscout Inc., which has worked with 39 Super Bowl teams in its decades of scouting. “Whether it’s, ‘Oh, he’s got him beat. Throw it out in front of him.’ Or, ‘Oh, he’s got him covered, I’m going to back-shoulder it.’ To me, that’s Peyton-like.”

Giddings does plenty of name-dropping. In Mendoza, he sees Philip Rivers-like preparation, Joe Montana-like game management and Andrew Luck-like facility for making the big play when needed.

Because he was, simply, clutch. Mendoza ranked first in the FBS in expected points added per dropback last year overall (+0.52), second in EPA per dropback on third and fourth downs (+0.58), and fourth in EPA per dropback when tied or trailing in the fourth quarter (+0.66).

Yes, he could do with taking fewer sacks. His arm strength is good but not great, certainly not Josh Allen-level obscene. But there just aren’t that many pokable spots in his game. The NFL ruling class has spoken: He’s the best quarterback in a bad quarterback class. Maybe he’s not a Caleb Williams-Jayden Daniels-Trevor Lawrence god-tier prospect, but his biggest green flag as an NFL hopeful might just be his lack of red flags.

“Everything I’m hearing about the kid, he’s going to come in as humble as a quarterback who didn’t have the success he had,” one current NFL general manager says.

He wouldn’t be here, in these interview rooms with these teams, if not for that success. But ears sure do perk up when they hear a guy has that kind of outsized success and a normal-sized sense of self.

“A lot of quarterbacks come in and they think they’re the man,” one scout says. “And they like the fact that he’s not an egomaniac.”

In this one specific and vital way, Mendoza, king of quirk, is perfectly ordinary.

BEFORE HE WAS anyone’s conquering hero, Mendoza was the quarterback no one wanted. Not even his own team.

In the summer of 2023, he was coming off his redshirt season at Cal and seeing about as many snaps in camp as he had the year before: practically none.

“An afterthought,” says Plough, who was the team’s tight ends coach at the time.

Mendoza had been an afterthought recruit too. Two stars and one lonely power conference offer, and even that, only after Cal came calling a week before signing day because it had lost a quarterback pledge. Now, he was a ghost out there. No reps, which turned into no meeting time with coaches, which turned into him being invisible. It was an exhausting hamster wheel, and Mendoza figured he’d try just about anything to hop off, so he knocked on Plough’s door, looking for support. Plough had coached quarterbacks for more than a decade, but since it wasn’t his day job at Cal, he told Mendoza he could help out at night.

Starting in August, Mendoza would show up to Plough’s office at 9 p.m., then stay until midnight. They’d convene every night that month to mine the basics, a How to Be a Better Quarterback seminar for one. How to learn the offense; how to call plays; how to suss out defensive schemes; how to locate blitzes; how to refine throwing mechanics; how to have pocket presence. By the time the season rolled around, Plough insisted they scale back these “midnight meetings,” as they took to calling them, to just Monday through Wednesday. Plough needed to take his wife out for at least one date night or she’d leave him, he said, so Mendoza “let” him have Thursdays off.

Then, about halfway through the season, the Cal coaches, looking for any juice at quarterback, tabbed Mendoza as the starter. Plough thought he might be let off the hook. He was happy for Mendoza but assumed the quarterback would trade his sessions with the tight ends coach for more time with the offensive coordinator.

Right after he was named the starter, Mendoza showed up to Plough’s office at 9, like normal. “‘Hey, we’re still going to meet, right?'”

Their midnight sessions continued for the year, sometimes just bleeding into time together at Plough’s house with his family. Plough had met his wife back in college when he was coaching in the sorority flag football league and she played on an opposing team. When this football meet-cute was brought to Mendoza’s attention, he had questions. What kind of plays had Plough called? What kind of plays had his wife run? What were those plays called? And why those plays? And how those plays? And …

“We might have talked for 90 minutes about the plays we were calling in sophomore year, in sororities,” Plough says. “But that’s just the way his mind works.”

He can’t let things go. Mendoza “rages to master,” Plough says, like all the best quarterbacks the coach has come across. Mendoza can’t sleep. Can’t move on. Can’t think about anything else. Whether it’s making sure he thanks you enough for dinner, or thanks you enough for the after-hours tutoring, or wants to get at the root of why that flag football play was called 20 years ago, or wants to intimately understand why that nickel lined up 2 yards outside of the field safety last week, he won’t stop, can’t stop, does not stop.

“It goes from being a joke, like, ‘Oh, that’s just Fernando being Fernando, what a goofball,'” he says, “to like, ‘Oh, no, that’s actually his greatest strength.'”

It will be hard to outwork Mendoza, hard to out-effort Mendoza, Plough says. And impossible to out-Mendoza Mendoza.

BACK AT THE combine, it’s the rare stretch of days when Mendoza will be outworked and out-efforted. Because he lapped the 2026 quarterbacks field, he has opted out of workouts. Instead, he’ll spend his few days in town reminding anyone who will listen that nothing is set in stone, that this is a job interview, that he still must prove himself. (Nowakowski says this is Mendoza’s spiel in private too. “If I asked him right now, ‘Do you think you’ll be the first pick?’ He’ll be, like, ‘I don’t know. Man, I hope so.'”)

He won’t call it a coronation, though there are plenty of people in Indiana this week willing to do the coronating for him.

Word is he received a standing ovation as he walked through St. Elmo Steak House, one of the city’s (and combine’s) most revered institutions, just for the act of getting dinner.

Earlier that day, Mendoza walked the length of a hallway that led to Lucas Oil Stadium, where all the workouts he did not have to do were taking place. At the end of the corridor, a police officer with a buzz cut and white beard manned the security checkpoint. He was there to keep overeager fans at bay, but as Mendoza drew closer, hands in his pocket, the officer turned zealous himself: “Theeeeeere’s Fernando,” he yelled. Then he pointed at the quarterback. “You’re a blessing,” he told him.

And Friday, after he has completed his news conference duties, Mendoza walks past a different security guard, overseeing a different checkpoint, who pulls him aside. “Mr. Mendoza, we’re all so proud of you,” she says, then gives him a black bracelet. A token of her appreciation, perhaps, for what Mendoza just did, for what he might do yet.

His response is like so many of his others: earnest and a touch over the top. It’s impossible to out-Mendoza Mendoza.

“Oh wow, I love this,” he tells her. “Thank you. I love it. God bless you.”

He walks away, then turns back one more time for good measure. “Thank you!”

Harry Kane has reiterated that Bayern Munich still have “a lot to play for” this season after winning the Bundesliga title following their 4-2 thrashing of Stuttgart on Sunday.

The England international was substituted on at half time to bag his 31st goal, taking his tally to 51 across all competitions for Bayern this season, the most by any player for a top-five league side since Erling Haaland in 2022-23 (52).

After retaining the title — Bayern’s 13th in 14 seasons — an overjoyed Kane shared his ambitions for the remainder of the season.

“It’s been a fantastic season for us to finish the league off in the way we have with the goals that we scored.” Kane said.

“It’s a credit to the mentality of the boys, from the first game to the last we just keep pushing.

“We still have a lot to play for in other competitions, but all the hard work and days together this makes it worth it to be champions again.”

Kane, Michael Olise and Luis Díaz have a combined 94 goal contributions between them this season — the most by a trio on record (since 1988) in the Bundesliga.

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Kane celebrated the trio’s chemistry: “It’s special, I feel like the relationship just get stronger and stronger, it grows every time we play and train with each other.

“There is still a lot to play for we feel good every time when we’re on the pitch.

Two more trophies are up for grabs for Vincent Kompany’s side, with a semifinal against Bayer Leverkusen in the German Cup to play next as well as a highly-anticipated clash against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League semifinals.

Kompany, who has now won the Bavarian club’s 34th and 35th Bundesliga crowns, hailed the opportunity to keep winning trophies.

“The numbers are great, but it’s not over yet,” Kompany said.

“We keep going. It’s also a question of mentality. We always give our all, whether in pre-season or for a competitive fixture and I don’t want to stop yet.

“We’ve got crucial weeks to come. We’re excited, but also know how tough it’ll be. Our belief is there, and that’s very valuable in football.”

Additional information from PA contributed to this report.

Just under a month ago, Maryland Terrapins guard Oluchi Okanawa went viral for an intense moment with her coach Brenda Frese in their 74-66 loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels in the NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament.

Now, she is headlining what appears to be a rebuild of the Nigeria women’s basketball program.

Okananwa, the Terrapins star player, was having a dreadful third quarter where she turned the ball over multiple times, missed three free throws and missed a layup before getting yanked by Frese.

What followed turned out to be one of the most viral moments of March Madness. Frese went forehead-to-forehead with the guard in an intense coaching moment, telling her star Terrapin “I believe in you, but you got to want this moment!”

Oluchi went back into the game, immediately scored, got a steal and ended up with 21 points in a remarkable turnaround. She said after the game that she welcomed the intensity of the coaching moment.

“Coach understands I’m a competitor at heart,” she said. “I’ve told her this before, and I’ll keep on telling her this forever. I love to be coached hard. That’s what she does with me every single day.”

Less than four weeks later, Okananwa is now top of the list on the Nigeria women’s basketball team, as they named a 21-player training camp roster ahead of a series of friendlies against WNBA opposition, part of preparations for the 2026 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Berlin.

Far from routine, the squad named by head coach Rena Wakama, appears to be a clear indication that D’Tigress are fully in refresh season, with a wave of NCAA-based players called up, led by Okananwa and Texas Tech’s Stephanie Okechukwu, the tallest player in the history of NCAA women’s basketball at 7 feet 1 inch.

Both players are part of a total of 15 players on that roster picked from fourteen different US programs. Of those, Okananwa and Okechukwu are the undisputed picks of a bunch spanning Power Four programs, the Ivy League and the junior college ranks.

It is the most concentrated draw on the NCAA pipeline in D’Tigress history and comes in the wake of the departure of former captain Sarah Ogoke, as the NBBF looks to lower the age of the team with players like Ezinne Kalu, Promise Amukamara, and Victoria Macaulay the other side of 30.

Okananwa, a junior, earned AP and WBCA All-America honorable mention honors this season after averaging 17.8 points, 5.4 rebounds and a Big Ten-leading 74 steals in 33 starts for the Terrapins. She led Maryland in scoring in 28 of 33 games and reached 20 points or more in 14 outings.

With her talent, Okananwa could well be the face and future of Nigeria women’s basketball.

Okechukwu, the 7-foot-1 center from Umunneochi, Nigeria, who attended high school in Japan, signed with Texas Tech in January as the tallest player in the history of NCAA women’s basketball.

She did not play during the 2025-26 season due to NCAA eligibility complications related to her academic transcripts, but remains enrolled at Texas Tech and is expected to compete beginning next season.

Stanford are the only program to contribute more than one player. They are Shay Ijiwoye, a sophomore guard from Phoenix, Arizona, who appeared in 32 games for the Cardinals last season, averaging 2.7 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.3 assists.

Her teammate Nora Ezike, a freshman forward from La Grange, Illinois, made her Nigeria debut at the FIBA U19 World Cup in Brno, Czechia, last July, where she opened with 25 points on 8-for-8 shooting in Nigeria’s first-ever U19 World Cup victory against China. She played in nine games off the Stanford bench in 2025-26.

Another addition is Uche Izoje, who may be college basketball’s most compelling origin story. The 6-foot-3 center from Asaba, Delta State, left Nigeria at age 13 to play basketball in Japan, spent two seasons with Chanson V-Magic in the Women’s Japan Basketball League as a two-time All-Star and 2024 Rookie of the Year, then arrived in the United States for the first time to play at Syracuse.

In her debut college season she averaged 15.6 points, 9.2 rebounds and a conference-leading 2.6 blocks per game, capping a standout debut season by winning ACC Rookie of the Year and going on to score 23 points in 25 minutes against Iowa State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Hall of Famer Geno Auriemma called her “the best player we’ve seen this year.”

Miami freshman forward Danielle Osho, a four-star recruit from Dacula, Georgia and a two-time Georgia state high school champion, also earns a call-up. Osho averaged 2.5 points and 2.9 rebounds in her first college season with the Hurricanes.

Despite the seemingly overwhelming number of NCAA-related rookies, the squad is held together by an experienced core of vets that include Kalu, Amukamara, Macaulay, Nicole Enabosi and Pallas Kunayi-Akpanah.

But they are also missing just as much experience, including the leadership of captain Amy Okonkwo, who signed a training camp contract with the Dallas Wings after averaging 11.0 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.4 steals across eight appearances in her WNBA debut with the franchise in 2025.

Elizabeth Balogun is in a similar position with the Toronto Tempo. Murjanatu Musa is also absent, competing instead with Basket Landes at the EuroLeague Women’s Final Six in Zaragoza, Spain, where she is in the running for the MVP in only her first season in that competition.

Despite this influx of largely young and untested players, Kunayi-Akpanah says the objective for those three games in the States is clear.

“These aren’t just exhibition games,” she said. “These are games for us to test our plays, our systems and how we communicate under pressure. Basically, everything we’ve been building. All is to arrive in our best shape for the World Cup in September.”

D’Tigress face the Los Angeles Sparks on April 25, the Minnesota Lynx on April 27, and the Indiana Fever on May 2 as part of their preparations for the 2026 FIBA World Cup, which begins September 4 in Berlin, Germany.

Nigeria qualified as AfroBasket champions, but were still required to take part in World Cup qualifying tournament where they went 2-3.

Still, those results were sufficient to maintain their eighth-place standing in the FIBA Women’s World Rankings with 700.3 points and D’Tigress remain the only African nation ranked inside the global top 10.

Full training camp roster:

Promise Amukamara, Shay Ijiwoye, Donanu Regina, Jerni Kiaku, Ezinne Kalu, Oluchi Okananwa, Gabby White, Nora Ezike, Victoria Macaulay, Vivian Iwuchukwu, Pallas Kunayi-Akpanah, Suzie Rafiu, Danielle Osho, Nicole Enabosi, Maryam Dauda, Rita Igbokwe, Stephanie Okechukwu, Uche Izoje, Vera Ojenuwa, Favour Nwaedozi and Blessing Ejiofor.

D’Tigress College Future:

Shay Ijiwoye – Stanford

Donanu Regina – Barton Community College

Jerni Kiaku – Indiana University Hoosiers

Oluchi Okananwa – Maryland

Gabby White – UVA transferring to UNC

Nora Ezike – Stanford

Vivian Iwuchukwu – USC Trojans

Suzie Rafiu – Columbia University

Danielle Osho – Miami Hurricanes

Maryam Dauda – U South Carolina Gamecocks

Rita Igbokwe – Ole Miss

Stephanie Okechukwu – Texas

Uche Izoje – Syracuse

Vera Ojenuwa – UGA

Favour Nwaedozi – Mississippi State