Former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, who led the Buckeyes to a 2002 national championship, has been named the state’s new lieutenant governor.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine made the announcement Monday that Tressel will fill out the two years remaining in the term of office, which was created when former Lt. Gov. Jon Husted was chosen to take over the U.S. Senate seat that belonged to newly elected Vice President J.D. Vance.

Tressel recently retired as the president of Youngstown State University, a position he held since 2014.

‘I wanted someone who would focus on education, someone who would focus on workforce,’ DeWine said in making the announcement.

Tressel began his head coaching career at Youngstown State in 1986, after serving as a position coach at Ohio State for three seasons. He led the Penguins to 135-57-2 record and four NCAA Division I-AA national championships in 15 seasons.

He was hired by Ohio State in 2001 to succeed John Cooper and a year later led the Buckeyes to an undefeated season and a BCS national championship.

Over 10 seasons in Columbus, Tressel’s teams compiled a record of 106-23, winning at least a share of five consecutive Big Ten conference titles and making two more appearances in the national championship game.

Even after two weeks of predictions and breakdowns of a title showdown between teams that had met two years prior, Super Bowl 59 still managed to produce a stunning result.

The Philadelphia Eagles rebuffed the Kansas City Chiefs’ three-peat bid in decisive fashion, rolling to a 40-22 victory at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans that wasn’t even as close as the final score indicated. The revenge factor was high for the Eagles, who set things right after they fell short against the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57. As the closing chapter to the 2024 season, the game is bound to have significant fallout on the coming months.

Here are the biggest winners and losers of Super Bowl 59:

Winners

Nick Sirianni

A beatdown this thorough and well-executed points back to leadership. Sirianni began the year facing hot-seat speculation after last season’s meltdown, and he ended it with a Lombardi Trophy and the second-most wins (including the playoffs) of any coach through the first four years of his career (54). Asked often in recent weeks about what his team had learned from its Super Bowl 57 loss to the Chiefs as well as last season’s tailspin, Sirianni vowed that the team had grown from the setbacks. The proof came on the field at Caesars Superdome, as the coach seemed to have pressed all the right buttons to have his team ready to dismantle a group that the rest of the league had been unable to shake.

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Howie Roseman

‘You want to know what the secret to good coaching is?’ Sirianni asked on NFL Network’s postgame show. ‘Get good players.’ Roseman has unquestionably done that and then some. After Philadelphia flamed out in spectacular fashion to end last season, the architect of the roster embarked on what will be remembered as one of the most aggressive and transformative offseasons in league history. He netted massive returns on free-agent contracts both big (2,000-yard rusher Saquon Barkley) and small (NFL Defensive Player of the Year finalist Zack Baun), and a draft class highlighted by Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean took the secondary from a weak point to a source of strength. Recall what A.J. Brown said on Opening Night: ‘I think Howie Roseman is the reason we are here tonight.’

Vic Fangio

Long celebrated as one of the game’s preeminent defensive minds, Fangio finally put together what will go down as the crowning achievement of his career. Despite never blitzing Mahomes, the Eagles defense racked up 16 pressures (with a pressure rate of 38.1%, according to Next Gen Stats) and six sacks. Fangio’s approach of denying big plays became a widely imitated tactic for countering Mahomes in recent years, but he was famously 0-8 as a head coach and coordinator against the Chiefs star – until Sunday. Now, he owns a signature Super Bowl performance against one of the game’s all-time greats.

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Jalen Hurts

After outplaying Patrick Mahomes in the initial Super Bowl showdown between the two signal-callers two years ago, Hurts didn’t have to go throw-for-throw with his Chiefs counterpart, as his supporting cast gave him a huge boost. But let’s not undersell what the Eagles quarterback was able to accomplish on the night, as well as the entire season. Hurts improved greatly against the blitz after facing substantial scrutiny for how he handled pressure, so it was fitting that his campaign would be capped by conquering a Steve Spagnuolo defense. He wasn’t necessarily the engine for the victory, but with three total touchdowns, he was a deserving MVP.

Josh Sweat

In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, Sweat changed his agent, saying ‘it’s the biggest moment of my life.’ That might have actually come Sunday, when the impending free agent recorded 2 ½ sacks and repeatedly overwhelmed Kansas City’s offensive line as part of a performance that easily could have earned him Super Bowl MVP honors. At just 27, he’s due for a massive pay raise – whether from Philadelphia or another bidder – after signing a one-year, $10 million contract last season. For a player who endured a series of significant health challenges – including a scary neck injury, internal bleeding that the Eagles described as a ‘life-threatening situation’ and a torn ACL and knee dislocation in high school – the long-term security will be well-deserved.

Saquon Barkley’s skill set

On a night when he was held to 57 rushing yards on 25 carries – still good enough to set the single-season record including the playoffs – Barkley managed to make his mark in other phases of the game. The first-team All-Pro added a team-high six catches for 40 yards, and he also stood out with his work picking up blitzes and as a lead blocker for Hurts on a few runs.

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Fox

A blowout of this proportion might typically be poison for ratings. Here’s betting that’s not the case for Sunday’s game, as many viewers who have grown weary of the Chiefs surely were interested in indulging in some schadenfreude. While this was a lopsided affair, the stunning downfall of a team that repeatedly prevailed in close calls kept the audience engaged and the entertainment factor high.

Birthday boys

When it comes to birthdays, better to trade in cards and cakes for trophies and rings. DeJean celebrated turning 22 by hauling in a pick-six, his first career interception. He also became the first player in Super Bowl history to score a touchdown or intercept a pass in the game on his birthday. And while Barkley didn’t have a prolific outing from a statistical standpoint, the win was no doubt a sweet present for a player who had grown tired of toiling on losing teams during his run with the New York Giants. Said the first-team All-Pro after the game: ‘It’s a great way to turn 28.’

Jake Elliott

After missing a career-high eight field-goal attempts in the regular season and three extra-point attempts in the playoffs, Elliott rediscovered his sturdy form on the Super Bowl stage. He converted all four of his field-goal attempts and four extra-point attempts to score 16 points, setting a new Super Bowl high for kickers. His nine career field goals are tied with Chiefs counterpart Harrison Butker for the most in the game, and he now has the most attempts of any kicker without a miss.

Kendrick Lamar

If Caesars Superdome were able to measure approval rating in real time, no figure who touched the field would have come close to the Super Bowl halftime performer. Lamar’s set was downright electric and pushed the envelope as far as anyone on this stage could. Good luck to whoever tries to follow up next year in Santa Clara.

Losers

Patrick Mahomes

Asked last week if there was a game he replayed in his mind most often, Mahomes replied that the Buccaneers’ beatdown of the Chiefs in Super Bowl 55 was the clear choice. It’s a good bet that he now has a new answer. Whether he was off target or trying to avoid the Eagles’ relentless pressure, the three-time Super Bowl MVP looked out of sorts from the outset Sunday night. Unable to crack Fangio’s Cover 4 shells, he completed just six of 14 passes for 33 yards with two interceptions in the first half. That essentially sunk Kansas City, which only showed a spark late in the fourth quarter, when Mahomes heaved a 50-yard touchdown to Xavier Worthy. There’s no tarnishing what’s already an outstanding résumé, but amid a stretch when Mahomes was repeatedly compared to Tom Brady, it was almost too fitting that he had another experience in which an unyielding front four derailed his title hopes.

Travis Kelce

He passed Jerry Rice for the most career receptions in Super Bowl history (35), but there’s no chance that’s how he or anyone else will remember his performance on the night. For the first time in his career, Kelce was held without a first-half catch in a postseason game, and his four catches for 39 yards were rendered meaningless by the massive hole the Chiefs found themselves in after halftime. Questions about his future will linger, but after he signaled all week that he intended to continue playing, this would be quite the sour note for one of the game’s all-time greats to end his career on if he changes his mind.

Taylor Swift

Want another reminder about how much of a break from the typical reality Sunday night was? Swift was resoundingly booed at Caesars Superdome. How many stadiums has that happened in the last two years? And it goes without saying that taking in one of the greater letdowns of Kelce’s career couldn’t have been much fun. Just another reminder that it’s impossible to stay undefeated forever.

Chiefs’ offensive line

The last time Mahomes faced this much pressure, Kansas City responded by overhauling its protection plan up front. Repeating that effort won’t be easy, as the Chiefs currently only have $11 million in spending space for 2025, according to OverTheCap.com. That could be a harbinger for more troubles, as offensive guard Trey Smith is bound to have suitors willing to reset the market at his position. And after scraping by moving left guard Joe Thuney out to safeguard Mahomes’ blind side, the AFC champs need to identify a long-term solution at left tackle.

Fox

If you’re going to debut a new scorebug at the Super Bowl, you better be confident it will be met with approval. Instead, the confusing look sparked incredulity from viewers. At least the network has plenty of time to retool it before trotting it out again. Meanwhile, Tom Brady frequently seemed unable to measure up to the moment in the capper to his first year as a broadcaster.

NFL schedule-makers

As the reigning champs, the Eagles are set to get the honor of kickoff the 2025 campaign at home. While they should still command plenty of attention, it’s clear that no team can measure up to the Chiefs as a draw for a national audience. A Super Bowl rematch isn’t in the cards to open Week 1, as that showdown is set to take place at Arrowhead Stadium. There are some promising divisional matchups with the Jayden Daniels and the Washington Commanders for an NFC title game re-do or the Dallas Cowboys, who will be kicking off a new era under first-year coach Brian Schottenheimer. But there’s no slam dunk sell like the Chiefs.

Drake

Do we really need to explain this one?

In a Super Bowl commercial lineup that leaned into artificial intelligence, nonspecific meditations on divisiveness and the usual smattering of celebrities, Budweiser rose above the chaff with a proven formula.

For the ninth time, Budweiser emerged as the winner of USA TODAY’s Ad Meter contest as viewers voted “First Delivery,” a tale of a Clydesdale foal proving its mettle, the No. 1 commercial in Sunday’s game broadcast.

It marks a return to the winner’s circle for Budweiser, which claimed its first Ad Meter title in 1999 yet hadn’t reached that No. 1 spot in 10 years. And it was a banner year overall for Anheuser-Busch, which led all alcohol products by purchasing 3 ½ minutes of advertising time – at about $7 million per 30 seconds – and saw a payoff in viewer approval.

Budweiser edged Lay’s “The Little Farmer,” which finished second on the strength of an authentic backstory of potatoes sourced to domestic farms. And it was an InBev flood after that.

Michelob Ultra placed third with its “Ultra Hustle” spot featuring actors Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara as advanced-age pickleball paragons. Stella Artois, with soccer star David Beckham and Matt Damon in a separated-at-birth saga, followed in fourth, and exurban America cul-de-sac bros Peyton Manning, Post Malone and comic Shane Gillis helped Bud Light to an eighth-place finish.

But it was the anchor brand that finished above it all, proof that a time-tested visual (horses) and a recognizable brand go a long way on a Super Sunday when consumers are increasingly distracted by second and third screens.

“We hear from our fans that Super Bowl is just not the same without the iconic Clydesdales,” says Kyle Norrington, Anheuser-Busch’s chief marketing officer. The “First Delivery’ spot ‘reinforces that we’ve been delivering since 1876 and will continue for decades to come.”

If AdMeter voters are any indication, some dint of authenticity – and an earlier time slot in a game that finished Eagles 40, Chiefs 22 – certainly helped.

An Open AI ChatGPT spot finished 54th out of 58 ads slotted from kickoff to the final gun. A Meta x Ray-Ban collab landed in 45th. Only Google, with a voice assistant helping a struggling professional with a cover letter, performed well among voters, ranking 15th.

Other spots similarly vexed viewers.

Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg, the latter fresh off an appearance at a presidential inaugural ball, mad-dogged each other and yelled hateful epithets, apparently to prove a point about stamping out hate. Coffee Mate’s first Super Bowl spot ever was oddly conceived as the protagonist’s ability to manipulate his tongue apparently didn’t sell fans on the merits of its cold foam product; it placed 56th.

Fetch and Tubi, meanwhile, had the misfortune of being emerging brands placed in the latter slots of a blowout game, perhaps explaining their positions in the last two spots.

The much-anticipated reunion of Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reenacting their iconic diner scene in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ connected sufficiently for Hellmann’s, rounding out a top 10 that also featured both NFL ads.

Yet at the top was an old reliable. Budweiser sat out the big game altogether in 2021 and didn’t solidify its spot for this Super Bowl until the waning weeks of the run-up. And then it was foal steam ahead.

“This is a privilege, that our company and brands get associated with this massive moment in culture,” Norrington says. “It means a lot, not only to our marketing team but to the 65,000 people in our Anheuser-Busch system that make this the moment it deserves to be in culture in America.

“We don’t take that privilege lightly.”

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Mikaela Shiffrin will not defend her title in the women’s giant slalom at the World Alpine Skiing Championships due to the lingering effects of a crash she had in November.

The American record-holder with 99 World Cup wins made the announcement Monday in an Instagram post, saying she’s ‘working through some mental obstacles’ after suffering a deep puncture wound to her abdomen during a giant slalom race in Killington, Vermont.

‘I’ve poured all of my energy into getting my giant slalom in shape to be prepared to start World Champs GS in Saalbach on Thursday. The long-story-short is…I’m not there. Right now, I feel quite far away,’ she wrote. 

Shiffrin, the most successful skier in modern world championships history, went on to explain the source of her struggles.

‘Honestly, I really didn’t anticipate experiencing so much of this kind of mental/PTSD struggle in GS from my injury in Killington,’ she wrote. ‘Coming to terms with how much fear I have doing an event that I loved so dearly only 2 months ago has been soul-crushing.’

Shiffrin did say, however, that she would compete in the Team Combined at the worlds, which are being held in Saalbach, Austria. The official start list has not beeen posted, but Shiffrin said she would be paired with teammate Breezy Johnson, who on Saturday won gold in the women’s downhill. The Team Combined is a new addition to the world championships, pairing skiiers in the slalom and downhill and adding their times together.

Shiffrin is the most successful skier in modern world championships history, winning seven gold medals and 14 total medals in 17 individual race starts dating back to 2013.  

After three weeks of destruction and despair, this was the Super Bowl many Americans needed.

From the pregame festivities featuring a cornucopia of New Orleans music to the not-so-subtle optics of Kendrick Lamar’s red, white and blue flag of Black men to the ads touting science and diversity to the Philadelphia Eagles burying the Kansas City Chiefs, the entire day felt like a repudiation of the sledgehammer President Donald Trump and his minions are trying to take to this country.

That Trump had a front-row seat for it — until he fled early in the third quarter, that is — made it all the more satisfying.

“Real heroes are humble. They’re not driven by pride. Pride is a terrible driver,” Harrison Ford said in an ad for Jeep, as footage of the U.S. soldiers who defeated fascism in World War II played.

“We won’t always agree on which way to go,” Ford said. “But our differences can be our strength.”

That’s the opposite message we’ve been hearing since Trump returned to office. Elected to bring down grocery prices and finally fix our broken immigration system, Trump has instead taken us to a place of darkness.

He and his administration have dismantled efforts to counteract systemic racism and misogyny, claiming diversity makes us weaker and impugning people of color and women as inferior. He is ignoring the rules of law and shredding Constitutional norms. He’s putting a halt to the research and innovation that can improve the lives of all Americans.

Meanwhile, Trump’s overlord Elon Musk is rummaging through the private data of U.S. citizens and trying to shutter agencies and departments like the king he is not.

And Trump no doubt came to the Super Bowl expecting the MAGA-friendly Chiefs to win, allowing him to co-opt the victory as more proof of his “mandate” while giving him license to mock the Eagles for spurning his White House invitation in 2018.

Instead, Trump and everyone watching got a reminder that protest, and progress, are the bedrock of this country. That we are better because of our many colors, races and creeds, our richly layered culture the result of all of our contributions.

The pregame show was a love letter to New Orleans jazz, whose very beginning was a means of resisting oppression. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” were performed by Black artists while Trombone Shorty gave “America the Beautiful” its soul.

Several commercials celebrated science or rejected divisiveness. Perhaps the most powerful was Nike’s ad featuring Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Jordan Chiles and several other high-profile women athletes clapping back at a society that for too long has refused to recognize their worth.

“Whatever you do, you can’t win,” the narrator says. “So … win.”

While Lamar, who has Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize, didn’t say anything overtly political, he didn’t need to. While performing ‘Humble,’ he created an American flag with his backup dancers — every one of them a man of color. It was a powerful image, one that both rejected Trump’s attempts to whitewash our country while embracing the diversity that is actually what makes this country great.

That Lamar had struck a nerve in Trump World was evident by all the Tweets criticizing the halftime show. “Not Like Us,” it’s not just a Drake diss track!

But it was the Eagles who delivered the most emphatic statement of the night.

Trump has made no secret of his dislike for Philadelphia — “bad things happen in Philadelphia,” he once griped — and it’s obvious he still feels the sting of the Eagles snubbing him after their previous Super Bowl win. He was notably silent after the NFC Championship while congratulating Kansas City on its AFC crown, and he again lavished praise on the Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes and Mahomes’ wife in a pre-game interview on Fox.

“The quarterback really knows how to win,” Trump said. “He’s a great, great quarterback.”

Not on this night! The Eagles sacked Mahomes six times and picked him off twice, and not until late in the third quarter could the Chiefs get anything going offensively. By then it was too late. Jalen Hurts and the Eagles were flying, and all that was left was to engrave the trophies.

Hurts is a model of perseverance, an example on how to pick yourself up after you’ve been knocked way down. He lost one title game at Alabama, then was benched in another. Hurts and the Eagles lost in the Super Bowl two years ago, and there’s never a shortage of people criticizing him.

But Hurts is now a Super Bowl champion, and that might be the biggest takeaway for the Americans who, even now, still have faith that this country can live up to its promises and ideals. When things seem darkest, when the task in front of you seems insurmountable, put your head down and go back to work. Let the disappointments fuel rather than debilitate you.

This Super Bowl wasn’t just a celebration for Eagles fans. It was a much-needed reminder of what makes this country strong and America great. 

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.