Editor’s note: Fernando Mendoza is entering his first season with the Las Vegas Raiders after winning a national title and being selected with the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. The Athletic originally ran this story in January 2026.

MIAMI, Fla. — Last month, just minutes after Indiana beat Ohio State for its first Big Ten championship in 57 years, Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza couldn’t hold in his emotions. He had to let loose.

“The Hoosiers are flippin’ champs!” he told Fox Sports’ Jenny Taft, before crediting every position group on the team and explaining how the team is “process-oriented.”

Flippin’? Process-oriented?

“THE HOOSIERS ARE FLIPPIN’ CHAMPS!” 🗣️@IndianaFootball QB Fernando Mendoza was with @JennyTaft after winning the @bigten championship ‼️ pic.twitter.com/qNJBmXCSfW

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) December 7, 2025

For more than a year, Mendoza’s postgame interviews have drawn love and attention for their unique delivery and perfect grammar and prose.

Mendoza speaks like a coach or politician — maybe better — laying everything out, often looking into the camera while delivering an answer. He has dropped words like “migration” and “conglomerate” in interviews over the past month. In a world where athletes are trained to say as little as possible for fear of going viral in a bad way, Mendoza seems to always deliver something.

“People might think it’s fake, but it’s 100 percent him,” said Alberto Mendoza, Fernando’s brother and fellow Indiana quarterback.

Mendoza first went viral last year, as the quarterback at Cal, when he told ACC Network after a late touchdown drive to beat Stanford, “I’ll remember going 98 yards with my boys.” That line landed on T-shirts, but Mendoza’s near-tears proclamation that Cal was 6-6 and would go to a bowl game helped the clip resonate with college football diehards. It’s almost impossible to get a bad quote out of him.

“He’s incredible,” head coach Curt Cignetti said. “I take notes.”

“THAT WAS AN AMAZING COMEBACK … I LOVE MY BOYS … GO BEARS FOREVER!”

Fernando Mendoza overcome with emotion after his game-winning drive vs. Stanford 🥹@CalFootball | @qb_fernando pic.twitter.com/yYZvGQDhPY

— ACC Network (@accnetwork) November 24, 2024

People from Indiana, Cal and Mendoza’s marketing agency agree that it’s just Mendoza’s natural personality. The only media training notes he ever got from them was to shorten his answers. He didn’t need to name-drop every teammate.

“It’s greatly due to our parents,” said Alberto, who speaks with the same confidence and cadence as his older brother. “They taught us how to speak to people, how to carry ourselves, how to act in a professional manner.”

Like only he can, Fernando on Saturday referred to their 14-year-old brother Max as “a great businessman and person.”

His use of “flippin’” in Indianapolis was authentic, too. There is no cursing from Fernando, even in private.

“He’ll be like ‘gosh darn it’ when he gets scored on in (video games),” said Indiana receiver and roommate Charlie Becker, whom Mendoza referred to as “such a young man” in his on-field interview after beating Ohio State.

The quarterback’s delivery is no accident. Mendoza said at Saturday’s national championship media day that he took public speaking classes in high school and at Cal, and he watched YouTube videos about public speaking.

Those studies, along with his now-famous LinkedIn page, came from a desire to improve how he presented himself for a life after football — long before he was a Heisman Trophy winner and presumed No. 1 NFL Draft pick. He’s aware people say he talks like ChatGPT. He promises he’s a real person who does normal things.

“Such an important part is communication,” Mendoza said. “That’s how you really get yourself across the line. That’s how you really portray yourself and give a good impression to another person. That’s something I would recommend to anybody, especially any young sports athlete, is the way that you represent yourself and the way that you’re able to come across to your peers, to your coaches and to, later, ownership, it’s so important on your journey.”

As far back as his first press conferences as the starting quarterback at Cal, Mendoza would look into the camera while delivering answers. His Heisman Trophy acceptance speech last month, in which he got emotional talking about his mother and motivated overlooked players to believe in themselves, drew widespread praise.

Fernando Mendoza after winning Heisman:

“I want every kid out there who feels overlooked, underestimated to know, I was you… You don’t need the most stars, hype… You just need discipline, heart, and people who believe in you. And you need to believe in your own abilities.” https://t.co/S7I1RuA7dN pic.twitter.com/Vrekz6mPMX

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 14, 2025

For almost an hour on Saturday, Mendoza took every question, good and not-so-good, in stride. There wasn’t a single wasted answer, as he tried to give each reporter what they were looking for.

“He wants to make a personal connection with everyone,” said Greg Campbell, Indiana’s assistant athletic director for strategic communication. “That’s unique in a lot of ways for any walk of life. He wants people to feel like, when you ask him a question, he’s answering your question and not answering it for anybody else. He’s so personable and easy to like and work with.”

Mendoza has played the optimistic counter to his head coach Cignetti, who seems to like leaning into his own curmudgeonly narrative. Cignetti will rarely crack a smile. It’s hard to find Mendoza not smiling. They’re the yin and yang of emotional leaders who took the Hoosiers into Monday’s national championship. When Indiana won its first title in school history, the world awaited Mendoza’s next postgame message.

“I got declined to walk-on at the University of Miami. Full circle moment here playing in Miami.”

Fernando Mendoza’s full interview with @sportsiren after winning the CFP National Championship ❤️ 🥺 pic.twitter.com/2cWbD9sc3H

— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) January 20, 2026

“He doesn’t say a lot in the building or on the practice field. He’s not a vocal guy,” Cignetti said. “Where you get a full taste of Fernando Mendoza is during the interview process.

“And it’s always an A-plus interview.”

Australian rider Maeve Plouffe says she narrowly avoided being hit by a car during the first stage of the Tour Of Britain Women.

The Netherlands’ Lorena Wiebes retained the leader’s green jersey with victory on stage two.

Plouffe, 27, who rides for British continental team O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes, said the incident happened on a roundabout as she was chasing back to the peloton, following a puncture on Wednesday.

Posting on Instagram, she wrote: “While the race convoy was still in sight, and I was less than two minutes down, there were cars from the general public coming at me from all directions, including one that nearly hit me on a roundabout.

“Later on, the moto escort was wonderful and I felt much safer. But considering the recent devastating events in our cycling community, it’s scary to see situations like this, when we know that this can have horrific consequences, especially so soon after suffering such a tragedy.”

Plouffe was referring to the death of 19-year-old British rider Fin Tarling, who was killed last week in a high-speed collision with a van, which had strayed on to the road during the eighth stage of the Volta a Portugal.

Before the Tour of Britain Women began, there was a tribute to Tarling with a photograph of him projected on to a large screen and a minute’s applause which all 114 riders and spectators took part in.

Tarling was the younger brother of Netcompany Inoes rider Josh Tarling, who was announced on Thursday in the team’s line-up for the Vuelta a Espana three-week Grand Tour, which begins on Saturday.

Reacting to Plouffe’s social media post, Jonathan Day, the events director of British Cycling Ventures – a commercial entity of British Cycling, which organises the Tour of Britain Women – issued a statement to the BBC.

In it, Day said: “We note Maeve Plouffe’s comments about her experience during yesterday’s race, and we’re taking these extremely seriously.

“Rider safety is paramount and will always be treated as a priority in our planning and how we operate any race.

“We’re reviewing what happened with Maeve and her team O’Shea Red Chilli Bikes with the seriousness and empathy these comments demand.

“We recognise this comes at an especially difficult time for the cycling community, so we want to reassure all riders, teams and fans of the sport at this time of how serious we are treating these comments.”

MUNICH — In an effort to grow the National Hockey League’s popularity in Germany, the league and soccer giant FC Bayern Munich on Thursday announced a multiyear partnership and four more regular-season NHL games on German soil in coming years.

The NHL will play two regular-season games featuring the Boston Bruins in Munich during the 2027-28 season, plus two more featuring the Edmonton Oilers in Leon Draisaitl’s hometown of Cologne.

Those will follow two games between the Chicago Blackhawks and Ottawa Senators in Düsseldorf this coming December.

The first-of-its-kind partnership between the NHL and Bayern Munich was the product of a six-month negotiation that saw senior leaders from the organizations regularly crisscross the Atlantic to work through the potential for collaboration on co-branding, content, merchandise and whatever else they could think up.

The multiyear partnership with Bayern and additional NHL games come at a time when the league is mounting a concerted push in the German market, and NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly believes his league can learn from the country’s sporting standard-bearer.

“This isn’t just a team,” Daly said. “This is like 60 percent of the people in Germany are Bayern fans.”

There was no template to work from for a strategic alliance between a professional sports league and a club that plays another sport on another continent. That made for an unlikely scene inside Bayern’s headquarters on Thursday morning, when Daly sat alongside Kasper for a news conference conducted concurrently in German and English, then presented him with a replica Stanley Cup and gave way for Bayern star Alphonso Davies to join German-born NHLers Draisaitl and JJ Peterka on stage.

The gathering reinforced the possibilities at hand for the world’s top hockey league and one of soccer’s marquee clubs.

Rouven Kasper, Bayern’s chief marketing officer, is a member of FC Bayern’s board and oversees the club’s national and international marketing and sales. He was drawn to the NHL’s strong following abroad and believes the partnership will allow the team to expand its reach, which it currently pegs at 1.1 billion followers.

“The NHL is one of the biggest leagues in the world, the best hockey league in the world and this is our ambition: We always want to work together only with the best,” Kasper said. “What we have in common is that we are very close with our fans, that the dialogue is strong, that the atmosphere is good, and bringing these synergies together. When we were sitting together discussing (this possibility), it just totally made sense. For the NHL, it’s important coming to Europe, especially to Germany, and we can help them a lot here. And the other way around when it comes to (Bayern going to) the U.S., so I think it completely makes sense.”

On top of the four games announced Thursday, NHL has already committed to bringing more games to Germany for the 2028-29 season, and Daly told reporters that the league may eventually stage an outdoor game in the country, citing the 75,000-seat Allianz Arena, where Bayern Munich plays, as a possibility.

It’s all part of a “full-out effort to connect with the German fanbase,” Daly said. A league-initiated market analysis identified the country of 84 million as having huge potential for NHL growth, and the league’s board of governors recently signed off on a plan that identified Germany as a major priority.

“It’s a very developed economy here,” Daly said. “It’s a great sports market. Big population. All of the things lined up here. Again, I don’t want to say that it didn’t line up in other countries, but it did (here) to the point where we recommended a priority list to the board, and they embraced Germany.”

Viewed in that context, the decision to partner with Bayern Munich made a lot of sense for the NHL.

The club is a behemoth, with 45.2 million Instagram followers compared to the NHL’s 7.3 million, not to mention a trophy case that includes 14 of the last 15 domestic titles and a payroll more than double any of its competitors in Germany. That fact prompted a lighthearted moment during Thursday’s news conference when Davies was asked about salary caps, which the Bundesliga doesn’t feature while the NHL does.

“Obviously I’m happy that there’s no salary cap in football,” said Davies, whose yearly salary can reach 20 million euros ($24 million USD) with bonuses — significantly more than the $14 million Draisaitl commands as one of the NHL’s top stars. “I don’t really know how the salary cap works over there.”

Davies made those comments while sitting in front of a packed room two days before the start of Bayern’s season, with the Super Cup Final set to be played against Dortmund Saturday night.

While he counts Edmonton as his hometown and has been a regular attendee at Oilers games, including during the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, Davies wouldn’t typically find himself discussing hockey with members of the German media on the eve of a new campaign.

However, the hope from both the NHL and Bayern is that their new partnership will make this kind of crossover seem less foreign in the future.

“We both have established fanbases, we both have established business partners,” Daly said. “We want to collaborate and share information with respect to those business partners, and find ways to collaborate and move the business forward.

“Bayern is a world-class brand. It is known worldwide. It’s iconic. It’s unmatched in its credibility and its authenticity in terms of how it creates its fans. We want to learn from that.”

Ultimately, the chance to compare notes and forge new ground is what brought a hockey league and soccer club together.

“This is completely unique,” Kasper said. “Not just for our club. I think you’ve never saw it, that a league like the NHL is cooperating with a club and the other way around. We are both thinking quite innovatively and going new ways.

“This is what you saw today, and it’s just the start.”