John Harbaugh has a new office and it came with an endorsement from the highest office in the land.

The New York Giants officially introduced their new head coach at a press conference on Jan. 20, kicking off a new era for the team. Harbaugh, who spent 18 seasons with the Baltimore Ravens, was clearly excited and amped up about the opportunity when meeting the New York media for the first time.

That also came with a question about President Donald Trump, who encouraged the Giants to hire Harbaugh in a post to Truth Social.

‘It feels really great,’ Harbaugh said, when asked how it felt to have the president’s endorsement. ‘I also noticed in that post that he said, ‘John take the job,’ so I thought John Mara might’ve had something to do with that.’

Harbaugh went on to call the Giants the most iconic franchise in the biggest sport.

He officially agreed to a five-year deal to become the Giants head coach on Jan. 17, just days after it was first reported that both sides were working towards finalizing a contract.

The president has publicly backed Harbaugh as a coaching candidate since he was fired by the Ravens on Jan. 6.

‘HIRE JOHN HARBAUGH, FAST,’ Trump said in a Truth Social post on Jan. 7. ‘HE, AND HIS BROTHER, ARE TOTAL WINNERS!!! President DJT’

Trump later turned his attention to the Giants opening in another post on Jan. 10, suggesting Harbaugh should fill that vacancy:

‘The New York Football Giants should hire, without question, John Harbaugh – And John, a great guy, should TAKE THE JOB!!! President DJT’

Trump, who attended the college football national championship game on Jan. 19, was asked about the Harbaugh hiring before heading back to the nation’s capital.

‘But they got a great coach,’ Trump said. ‘I like the coach. I like his brother. They came up to see me about three months ago. They came up to see me in the White House with their mother and father because the mother likes me, and the father likes me and I think they like me.

‘And he’s a great coach and he’s gonna do well with the Giants, just like his brother does so well. They got something very special in their blood. And I’m happy for the Giants. They got a great coach.’

Harbaugh and his family notably visited Trump at the White House in July 2025. The now-former Ravens coach, who was also joined by brother and Los Angeles Chargers head coach, Jim, called the experience ‘amazing.’

‘It was an amazing experience,’ Harbaugh said at the time. ‘It’s not often you get invited and you get a chance to do something like that as a family. We were there, my daughter was there, Jim’s daughters were there. My mom and dad were there. My mom and President Trump – just seeing how he treated her was really meaningful.’

Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky died from an accidental drug overdose, a toxicology report revealed.
The report found methamphetamine, amphetamine, and components of kratom in his system.
Naroditsky was found dead in his Charlotte, North Carolina home in October 2025 at the age of 29.

American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky had multiple drugs in his system and died of an accidental overdose last year, according to multiple reports.

A newly-released toxicology report from the North Carolina Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday, Jan. 20 revealed Naroditsky had methamphetamine, amphetamine, 7-hydroxymitragynine and mitragynine in his system at the time of death, according to multiple outlets. The 29-year-old was found dead in his Charlotte, North Carolina home in October 2025 and police began investigating for possible suicide or drug overdose.

The North Carolina Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet responded to a USA TODAY Sports request for documents related to Naroditsky’s death, as of 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Jan. 20.

The Charlotte Chess Center, where Naroditsky had served as Chessmaster-in-Residence since 2020, announced his death on Oct. 20, 2025. The organization called the situation, ‘unexpected.’

Methamphetamine and amphetamine are addictive synthetic stimulants, while 7-hydroxymitragynine and mitragynine are psychoactive ingredients found in kratom. It’s a drug that is similar to an opioid and ‘can lead to psychotic symptoms, and psychological and physiological dependence,’ according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik was also subsequently investigated for his conduct surrounding Naroditsky’s death, with an investigation initiated by the International Chess Federation over public comments he had made. Kramnik accused Naroditsky of cheating online last year and Naroditsky denied any wrongdoing.

But Noroditsky appeared visibly distressed in his final Twitch broadcast on Oct. 18. He discussed the controversy and its toll on him, citing comments in the chat. The video was deleted from his official Twitch account, but a copy uploaded to YouTube was reviewed by USA TODAY.

Naroditsky was a California native who played in five U.S. Championships, according to the U.S. Chess Federation, and secured titles in junior and youth competitions. He won the gold medal in the Under-12 Open section of the 2007 FIDE World Youth Championships, and he won the 2013 U.S. Junior Championship at age 17.

Naroditsky was among the top-ranked in the world in blitz chess, a type of speed chess with specific time rules, as per the International Chess Federation (FIDE). He was also known to have a large online following, thanks to his love for teaching and streaming chess on platforms like Twitch and YouTube.

Naroditsky published a book, ‘Mastering Positional Chess,’ at just 14 years old in 2010 and another, ‘Mastering Complex Endgames,’ in 2012. In addition, he served as a ‘Chess Life’ magazine columnist from 2014 to 2020 and wrote columns about the game for the New York Times.

-USA TODAY reporter Mary Walrath-Holdridge contributed to this story

Do stars matter? Indiana football’s unprecedented national championship win over Miami on Jan. 19 certainly sparks the question.

The Hoosiers (16-0) were doubted all season, as their roster lacked high-end high school talent and was instead built by transfers, several of whom came from non-Power Four program James Madison, second-year coach Curt Cignetti’s former team. Indiana had zero former five-star recruits on its team and lacked obvious high-end NFL talent outside of eventual Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza.

Buy IU championship books, newspapers, gear

Indiana’s win shows a clear shift in the direction of college football: The sport isn’t just for traditional powers anymore, especially with how rosters are built.

‘I think that’s called a paradigm shift,’ Cignetti told reporters after Indiana’s 27-21 win. ‘People can cling to an old way of thinking, categorizing teams as this or that or conferences as this or that. Or they can adjust to the new world. The shift of the power balance and the way college football is today.’

The Hoosiers have embraced their roles in the current landscape. Mendoza even commonly referred to the team as a bunch of ‘misfits.’

‘Are there eight draft picks on this team? Probably not,’ Cignetti said. ‘But the whole was better than the sum of its parts.’

Indeed, Indiana’s roster is — on paper — the least talented to ever win a national championship. To put the Hoosiers’ magical season into perspective, here’s how Indiana compares to other national champions in terms of high school recruiting metrics:

Indiana football talent metric in 2025

When Michigan won the national championship in 2023, it became the first team to overcome not having the most elite-of-elite rosters in college football to reach the promise land. That roster ranked as the 14th-best in terms of recruiting talent that season, according to 247Sports’ Composite ratings.

Indiana absolutely blew that metric out of the water in 2025. The Hoosiers ranked 72nd in college football in talent metric this season, which isn’t even in the top half of the sport.

Heading into the season, the lowest blue-chip ratio of a CFP national championship team was 52%, meaning the roster was comprised of over half 4- and 5-star players. Indiana destroyed that trend, too, as its roster had a blue-chip ratio of around 8%.

Indiana’s talent metric ranked below a few notable teams, too. Oklahoma State was ranked No. 49 in the talent metric, despite finishing the season with a 1-11 record. Its only win was against FCS UT Martin. Boston College was also ranked ahead of the Hoosiers, coming in at No. 69 despite going 2-10 on the year.

Purdue, Indiana’s fiercest rival, was No. 54 in talent metric. All Indiana did was defeat the Boilermakers 56-3 in the final week of the regular season. The Hoosiers had zero 5-star recruits and only seven 4-star recruits on their roster for the 2025 season, along with 55 3-star players.

Granted, that doesn’t mean Indiana’s roster wasn’t talented: It clearly held its own and more against some of college football’s top teams. The Hoosiers defeated powerhouse programs Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon and Miami in their final four games, with their wins over Alabama and Oregon being more than 30 points.

Cignetti has said in the past he doesn’t pay attention to stars and rankings, rather focusing on production over projection, along with development. It’s clear that methodology paid off, along with bringing in the correct transfers.

‘I’ve never been into stars, just never have been,’ said Cignetti, the former recruiting coordinator at Alabama under Nick Saban. ‘Was a recruiting coordinator for about 20 years, as well as a coach. I think the evaluation is extremely important and there’s a lot of good players out there.

‘You find a guy that’s got the right stuff, good habits and wants to be great, and you develop them. That’s part of the job of the program.’

Talent metric for each national championship winner of CFP era

Here’s a look at the talent metric for each national champion since 2015, when 247Sports’ Composite ratings started tracking the metric:

2025: Indiana (72nd)
2024: Ohio State (3rd)
2023: Michigan (14th)
2022: Georgia (2nd)
2021: Georgia (2nd)
2020: Alabama (2nd)
2019: LSU (5th)
2018: Clemson (6th)
2017: Alabama (1st)
2016: Clemson (9th)
2015: Alabama (1st)

Indiana football recruiting class for 2026

High school class: No. 34 class nationally (seven four-stars and 15 three-stars)
Transfer portal class: No. 7 class nationally (five four-stars and nine three-stars)

Hoosiers backup quarterback Alberto Mendoza will enter the transfer portal, according to multiple reports Tuesday, Jan. 20, one day after Indiana beat Miami 27-21 in the title game of the College Football Playoff to secure the first national championship in program history.

Mendoza is the younger brother of Hoosiers starting quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the 2025 Heisman Trophy winner and the presumed No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.

According to multiple reports, Alberto Mendoza has committed to play for Georgia Tech.

As a redshirt freshman this season, Alberto Mendoza appeared in nine games, often relieving his older brother late in lopsided wins. Across those games, he completed 18 of 24 passes for 286 yards, five touchdowns and one interception. He was a threat on the ground, too, rushing for 190 yards and a touchdown on 13 attempts.

Mendoza’s decision comes about two weeks after Indiana landed a commitment from TCU transfer quarterback Josh Hoover, one of the most sought-after players in the portal. Hoover set a school record with 3,949 passing yards in 2024 and followed that up with 3,472 yards and 29 touchdowns this past season.

Should he win the job, as is widely expected, Hoover would become the third transfer quarterback to start for Indiana since coach Curt Cignetti was hired after the 2023 season, joining Kurtis Rourke and Fernando Mendoza.

Alberto Mendoza was a three-star recruit in the 2024 class coming out of Christopher Columbus High School in Miami. He was rated by 247Sports’ composite rankings as the No. 84 quarterback in the class. After enrolling at Indiana in June 2024, he was joined by his older brother, who transferred in from Cal after the 2024 season and went on to become the Hoosiers’ first Heisman winner in program history.

The Buffalo Bills fired head coach Sean McDermott despite his consistent winning record and multiple playoff appearances.
Ten NFL teams, nearly a third of the league, will have new head coaches next season.
Even Super Bowl-winning coaches like John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin are no longer with their long-time teams.

Apparently, winning in the NFL isn’t enough. Apparently, winning consistently in the NFL isn’t enough. Apparently, winning consistently in the NFL with class isn’t enough.

And here we are.

The Buffalo Bills’ surprisingly unsurprising decision to dump head coach Sean McDermott on Jan. 19, two days after his team’s gutting – and controversial – overtime loss to the Denver Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs means 10 teams, basically a third of the league, will be turning over what’s typically the most high-profile and high-pressure management post of any professional football operation.

(And maybe it’s just me, but I’d think Payton is in imminent jeopardy here. Not only did he allow McDermott’s Bills to break his quarterback’s ankle, Payton had already been outflanked by the Indianapolis Colts for clear and obvious replacement candidate Philip Rivers. I’d expect 47-year-old Drew Brees to be boarding a plane for Dove Valley at any minute, though who knows if the Broncos have the salary cap room to execute a trade with Fox after Payton mind-numbingly allowed Brees to take one of the network’s open analyst’s job a few months back rather than stash him on the practice squad in the aftermath of the Rivers debacle? But I digress.)

McDermott didn’t get the job done in Buffalo. Most coaches don’t.

Irreverence aside, here are some facts. Every NFL owner wants to win the Super Bowl every year − you don’t get to be a multi-billionaire able to obtain one of these franchises without a competitive streak. But, by that standard, only 3% of them are going to be completely satisfied annually when Valentine’s Day rolls around.

Send flowers and chocolates to a coach like McDermott, who made the playoffs eight times in nine seasons (including five AFC East titles and two berths in the conference championship game) – that after the Bills had missed the playoffs for 17 consecutive seasons prior to his arrival? After he fostered a familial atmosphere around a team that previously hadn’t held much allure for free agents? Nah, he never really got the job done. The team’s statement announcing his firing explicitly signaled someone new was required in order “to give this organization the best opportunity to take our team to the next level.”

McDermott’s ouster comes on the heels of other ringless bums getting whacked. Mike McDaniel, formerly of the Miami Dolphins, and Kevin Stefanski, a two-time Coach of the Year – for the Cleveland Browns – both made multiple postseason trips with organizations that have reeked of dysfunction for the entirety of the 21st century … and longer. Stefanski wasn’t out of work long, scooped up by the Atlanta Falcons over the weekend, and McDaniel doubtless won’t be – whether he gets another head job or becomes one of the league’s top-compensated offensive coordinators.

Let’s move on to John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin, who spent nearly two decades embroiled as adversaries in one of the league’s great border wars … while becoming pillars in their respective communities. And, while throwing figurative haymakers at one another twice – and sometimes thrice – per season, both of them did get it done, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens each earning a Lombardi Trophy during each presumptive Hall of Famer’s tenure.

Wait, pearls clutched – just one Super Bowl win, you ask? Per guy?

Yes, that’s correct. Harbaugh and Tomlin each have one massive ring. Meaning, by the time Super Bowl 60 concludes next month, they’ll account for 8% of those won over the past quarter century, a period in time when Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and the Manning brothers have 56% of them. The bling is pretty hard to come by, folks.

Regardless, Harbaugh was shown the door after 18 seasons (three of them sub-.500), 13 years removed from his apex and having blown too many fourth-quarter leads – maybe not a champagne problem, but not one encountered by bad clubs. Tomlin left of his own volition after 19 years, Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney II characterizing it as something of a family matter after he’d planned on having Tomlin back for Year 20. It should also be noted that Rooney expressed his distaste for the term “rebuild” while expressing this philosophy: ‘I think you try every year. Some years you have the horses to really get there. Some years you don’t, but you try every year, in my view.’

You’ll recall Tomlin never had a losing season, perhaps an accomplishment that will never be replicated over the entirety of a 19-year stint. But the consistent winning also precluded the Steelers from getting into position for the young franchise quarterback they so desperately needed to succeed Ben Roethlisberger. Tomlin absorbed tremendous heat for his seven consecutive playoff losses, all coming in decisive fashion. But now you know he didn’t exactly have – nor probably wanted – the luxury of a 2-14 season that might buy you Andrew Luck or whomever atop the draft.

NFL coaching carousel devolving into absurd shell game

See how freaking hard this job is? If you’re good at it, you stick around a while … so you can get lambasted on talk radio … so you can work 100 hours a week … so you can deal with 26-year-olds who might have infinitely more money, organizational influence and far less maturity than you probably do.

And Tomlin was one of the lucky ones. He left on his own terms. He worked for a patient, supportive, (mostly) realistic owner. Tomlin also won out of the chute. If predecessors Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher were hired nowadays, they’d already be begging for defensive coordinator interviews.

At least high-quality coaches like Harbaugh and Stefanski – and, most likely, Tomlin, McDermott and McDaniel, if they so choose – don’t have to look long to find another shot in what’s seemingly devolving into an absurd shell game.

“You can’t say that timing is perfect in anything,” Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said last week of his agonizing call to relieve Harbaugh, revealing that his former coach wound up consoling him.

“But I got to the point that I didn’t believe that I would feel regret after I made that decision. And that’s what instinct is. When you finally get to the point that you’re pretty damn sure that you are not going to regret the decision a day or a week later, then that’s the time to make the decision. Is that fair?”

Coming from one of the league’s truly great owners? Yes. Despite the seismic nature of the move, Bisciotti afforded Harbaugh the humanity, advice and help to move forward that few of his peers ever reap.

As for most everyone else? Jerry Glanville, who split nine seasons coaching the Falcons and Houston Oilers from 1985 to 1993 couldn’t have been more prophetic when he so perfectly summed up the league writ large while chewing out an official.

‘This isn’t college. You’re not at a homecoming. This is the NFL, which stands for ‘not for long.’”

A statement truer now than it’s ever been.