For as long as there have been coaches, there has been consternation over their performance.
Yet even in that generations-old tradition, the case of Ohio State’s Ryan Day is unique. Few coaches have produced as much ostensible success — and angst.
In his six seasons in Columbus, Day’s Ohio State teams have made four playoff appearances and won two Big Ten conference titles — making him the first coach since the program began in 1890 to start his career with consecutive conference titles. Under Day, the Buckeyes are 39-3 at home, 46-5 against conference opponents and 21-9 against ranked teams.
When the Buckeyes arrive at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, for Wednesday’s College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup against top-seeded Oregon, Day will boast a record of 67-10 and a winning percentage of .870, which, if it qualified (he hasn’t yet coached 10 seasons), would rank second on college football’s all-time coaching leader board.
A start like that might lead some coaches to be lionized or to earn enough goodwill to ensure decades of job security. Not in Columbus, where over the past month local coverage has described the “Day dilemma” and national outlets have pondered “How hot is Ryan Day’s Seat at Ohio State?”
“People are uncomfortable, and they don’t like him right now, there’s no question about it,” said Ari Wasserman, a national college football reporter for On3, who previously covered Ohio State for a decade as a beat reporter.
Unlike his two predecessors who won national championships in their first three seasons, Day has yet to claim a national title. In Columbus, however, perhaps even more damning is that Ohio State has also struggled in the other main criterion by which its football coaches are evaluated: It can’t beat its biggest rival.
Under Day, Ohio State is 1-4 against archrival Michigan, including four consecutive losses, and while fans could rationalize that rivalry losses in 2021, 2022 and 2023 were against strong Michigan teams — the most recent of which went on to win the national championship — the Buckeyes’ Nov. 30 defeat was mostly baffling.
Unranked, playing on the road and 20.5-point underdogs, the Wolverines commanded the game en route to a stunning win. As a postgame skirmish broke out on the field, cameras caught Day looking on, unmoving, as if in a daze. On social media, commenters were quick to point out that Ohio State had fallen flat despite having assembled a roster that, the school’s new athletic director said last summer, had cost $20 million in name, image and likeness payments.
One month later, even after Ohio State routed Tennessee in a first-round playoff game on Dec. 21, “OSU fans are still in a bit of shock about the Buckeyes playing such a bad game against a substandard Michigan team,” Doug Lesmerises, host of “Kings of the North,” a college football YouTube show, wrote by email.
Lesmerises, who has covered Ohio State since 2005, wrote that though the first-round victory had reinvigorated some national title confidence, it also “almost makes the Michigan loss more perplexing.”
“Day won’t just shake that off. A lot of fans who had been behind him have real, first-time questions about him that won’t be forgotten.”
Facing a barrage of criticism of a coach he didn’t hire, Ohio State’s athletic director offered public support for Day in mid-December, telling a local radio station that Day will “absolutely” be back next season. It is an open question, however, how much support Day has elsewhere within a fan base that dreams of national titles but demands a winning record against its rival.
“Ohio State has three goals each year — beat Michigan, win the Big Ten, win a national title. They are 0-11 on goals the last four years and still chasing this national title,” Lesmerises wrote. “If Ohio State doesn’t compete well against Oregon, and as long as OSU alum and former successful NFL head coach Mike Vrabel is without a current job, I don’t think Day’s future is certain.”
Like Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer, who each coached the school to a national title since 2002, Vrabel comes from deep Ohio roots. Day, in contrast, grew up in New Hampshire and spent virtually his entire career in either the Northeast or the NFL until he was hired as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator in 2017. Geography might matter little at some schools; for the Buckeyes, however, it is paramount. Ohio State players, coaches and fans rarely refer to Michigan by name, described it instead as “That Team Up North” or simply the initials “TTUN.” Each fall, as “The Game” approaches on the final weekend in November, it has become an annual Columbus tradition to cross out the letter “M” on campus signs with red Xes.
“The prevailing question about Ohio State’s coach is always can you be successful here if you do everything right and can’t beat that team,” Wasserman said.
Technically, the answer is now yes.
For more than 100 years, the path to a national title in college football effectively required an undefeated or one-loss season, making the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, played on the final weekend in November, a de facto elimination game in some years. This season’s expansion of the College Football Playoff from four teams to 12 and Ohio State’s place in the Big Ten, one of the sport’s two most powerful conferences, have afforded more leeway for losses and uncoupled the stakes of beating Michigan from the larger pursuit of a national title.
So despite an October loss to Oregon and the November head-scratcher against Michigan, the Buckeyes’ title dreams remain intact. That doesn’t mean the quarterfinal appearance in the Rose Bowl has healed all wounds. In a forum on Eleven Warriors, a popular Buckeyes fan website, a commenter recently polled fellow fans about what constituted success this season. One poster responded: “How can we have a poll about possible season-ending options when the season has already ended?”
“Winning a national championship is obviously the biggest prize, and I think people will be happy and celebrate it, but I think that in their hearts that there will be something missing from that illustrious season,” Wasserman said. “When teams look back at their champions and celebrate them, they think about purity. It’s not a pure season here.
“The main aspect of being a fan is to be able to talk trash to people and talk trash to Michigan fans. It’s like you win a national championship, you can buy all the memorabilia and the shirts and the commemorative graphics and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, a Michigan fan can look you in the eye and say, ‘We beat you.’ That sucks.”
In a twist, perhaps the most apt source of optimism for Day and Ohio State fans is the example of none other than Michigan. After he arrived in 2015, Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh promptly lost five consecutive times to Ohio State and, like Day, saw his goodwill fray. Yet last January Harbaugh rode the streets of Ann Arbor basking in a national championship parade.
For Day, “a national title parade would fix things,” Lesmerises wrote. “Until the last Saturday in November in 2025.”
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