Maybe its my scarlet and gray colored glasses, but I think this is the year that OSU gets back in the rivalry win column.
From now until preseason camp starts in August, Land-Grant Holy Land will be writing articles around a different theme every week. This week is all about the most important questions yet unanswered for the season. You can catch up on all of the Theme Week content and our ”Burning Questions” articles here.
The final four games of Ohio State’s 2024-25 season were nothing short of magical. There may never have been a better run in Ohio State — and possibly college football — history. And at the center of that run was Ryan Day. There is no question that the once-embattled head coach deserves all of the flowers that have come his way for the latest national championship trophy that now resides in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
Ryan Day is now a national championship coach, but more so, he is every bit one of the top two or three coaches in college football.
But I will not pretend that before that four-game run that I wasn’t ready for the end of the Ryan Day Era in Columbus. After tying myself in knots to defend him for years, the fourth-straight loss to Michigan, arguably the worst loss in program history, I felt that we had seen enough to know that Day didn’t have the constitution or mental and emotional makeup to get out of his own way and do what needed to be done. As I’ve written for years, I have never had any doubts about Day’s coaching abilities; in my mind, there is no one better at designing and coaching an offense, and very likely, few better human beings running major college football programs in the country.
However, it was always the intangibles that made me unsure of whether or not he could get his teams to their full potential… until, of course, he did just that.
Whether it was the shame of not beating his rival since 2019, the player-led meeting following The Game, the “lunatic fringe” calling for his job, or anything else, in last season’s College Football Playoff, he not only let the players on his inarguably stacked roster do their thing, but time and time again in the postseason, he put them in the exact right position to be successful. And in doing so, he proved everybody wrong who thought that he could not that he couldn’t win the big one.
So now that we know full well what kind of coaching magic Ryan Day is capable of, as he has crossed off a few major items on his career to-do list, it’s time to refocus on the Ohio State fundamentals, and none is more important than beating Michigan on Saturday, Nov. 29 at 12 noon ET in Ann Arbor.
In the past, Day has seemed obsessed with proving toughness through Woody Hayes-style football — and it cost him, repeatedly. Over the years, as this obsession with toughness led to loss after loss after loss after loss, he insisted on digging in and abandoning the things that his talent-laden team did best in order to attempt to win via a three-yards-in-a-cloud-of-dust philosophy.
But things have changed since the 2024 regular season finale. History and experience have shown the head coach that if he just trusts his players and his coaches to do what they do, great things can happen, and I have to believe that this very long, hard lesson has been learned. When Ryan Day’s Scarlet and Gray head north the weekend following Thanksgiving, I fully expect the Buckeyes — even if they aren’t as talented as last year’s team was — to play like they did during last year’s postseason.
On Tuesday, The Athletic published an interview with Buckeye wide receiver Jeremiah Smith in which he said, “I’m not a sore loser, but I hate losing, and losing to that team up north was pretty crazy,” Smith said. “In the end, I think it really helped us play the way we did in the playoffs. But I didn’t want to go to Ohio State and lose to that team up north. I just hate them. Just something about them. For the next two years, I promise you, I will not lose to them. I can’t lose to them in the next two years.”
And you know what? I believe him. Not just because J.J. is a generational talent (in a position room that seemingly has a generational talent every year), but because I truly believe that Ryan Day has figured it out. It is easy to forget that the man’s first-ever head coaching job is the one he has now. So he has had to go through the growing pains that all new coaches go through on the largest stage in college football. And while that process has taken far longer than I think it needed to, I do believe that he has finally emerged on the other side of it, ready to be the coach that he was always capable of, and that his team, program, and fans deserve.
Admittedly, I have believed before that Day had turned a corner, only to have him pull the football away as I obliviously run to kick it. But this feels different. But if it’s not, woo boy, I don’t know that I have the fortitude to make it through for another December of that kind of soul-searching.