CNN —
Ryan Day aims to have his Ohio State Buckeyes leave no doubt.
After a complete team performance that won the Bucks their first national championship in 10 years, Day should have removed any doubts about his tenure in Columbus in the minds of the Buckeye faithful.
Ohio State fans are some of the toughest and most critical in college football – indeed, some will come away from this 34-23 victory over Notre Dame, which won the school’s ninth national title, unhappy that it wasn’t an even bigger win – and Day has been the subject of their ire all season. Even as the Buckeyes blew out team after team for much of the season, a one-point loss to Oregon stuck in their collective craw.
And then came the listless loss to Michigan. Boos rained down on Day and his team from their home fans as they were unable to get anything going on offense for much of the game and the truly mediocre Wolverines scored their fourth-straight victory over their arch-rivals.
All that seems a distant memory now. Day has delivered on the promise his team showed most of this season and the talented Buckeyes are now national champions.
“They’re my motivation – my family at home, my wife and kids and then these guys. That’s why I get up every day, to help these guys reach their dreams and goals,” Day said after the game. “That’s all it comes down to, and then also it just shows an example – when things get hard in life, just keep swinging as hard as you can and fight. That’s our culture.”
Day started off this playoff run potentially coaching for his job in the game against Tennessee. It’s hard to overstate just how down-and-out Buckeye fans were after their loss to the Wolverines on November 30 and the ugly scenes following that game when Michigan tried to plant a flag at midfield of Ohio Stadium.
Volunteer fans invaded the Horseshoe for the opening round game, with some estimates saying the crowd was 40% Tennessee fans. ESPN commentator and Buckeye alumni Kirk Herbstreit said during that broadcast that he had never seen anything like it. Pundits were predicting that, if Ohio State lost to the Vols, Day might be out of work despite an incredible start to his head coaching career in Columbus.
After a quarter of play against Tennessee, Day was no longer on the hot seat. Three touchdowns in the first quarter set the tone for the rest of the Buckeye playoff run, a massive lead en route to a total blowout of the Volunteers.
In the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, it was much the same – even worse, really. By halftime of that one, Ohio State was up 34-8 and the top-seeded, unbeaten Ducks looked like they didn’t belong on the same field as the Buckeyes.
Texas put up more of a challenge, keeping the game close until the final minutes when senior Jack Sawyer stripped UT quarterback Quinn Ewers of the ball and broke away from his former roommate and the rest of the Longhorns for a touchdown that iced the game.
Putting the loss to Michigan behind them was not an easy task, Day said after the win against Tennessee, but it was necessary for the Buckeyes to get moving again toward the ultimate goal of the season: a national title.
“I’ve said this before, nothing that’s happened previously is going to have any effect on what’s going on other than learning from our experiences,” Day told reporters. “The first week was an identification of the issues. You don’t just move on from the game. You have to identify what the issues are and have real conversations with the players, allow them to speak because they’re vested in this. And then coaches have their two cents.
He added, “To say it doesn’t weigh on you, it does. We have a lot of pride in who we are. These guys have a lot of pride.”
Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who’s known Day most of his life, said it was clear that the pressure was weighing on the head coach. But, Kelly said, it wasn’t anything that the 45-year-old couldn’t handle.
“I told him a long time ago he’s built for this. And he understands it. He understands the gravity of what his position is. He understands how everybody feels about Buckeye football and rightly so,” Kelly said after that Tennessee win. “He feels the same exact way. I don’t think anybody took the loss to The Team Up North harder than he took the loss. That’s the type of person he is.
“But he also has to lead from front. It wasn’t, ‘Feel sorry for me,’ and, ‘Hey, is everybody going to pick me up and make me feel better?’ It’s, ‘No, we’ve got to address this the right way, look at what we did on film. We have to figure out how can we correct that.’”
There were some echoes of that loss to Michigan in the final minutes of the game against Notre Dame. Kelly got conservative again with his play-calling. The Irish showed why “fightin’” is in their school’s mascot, charging back from a 31-7 deficit to get within a touchdown and a two-point conversion.
For the first time since the opening quarter, the Buckeyes were facing pressure – real pressure. The play-calling stayed very conservative, with Howard taking a couple quarterback keepers and Notre Dame stopping the clock with their timeouts. But Day and Kelly flipped the script at the last second.
Howard floated a long pass on a go-route down the right sideline by freshman wideout Jeremiah Smith, who leapt and hauled in the 57-yard catch to put the Buckeyes in the Notre Dame red zone with two minutes to go. From there, it was a Jayden Fielder field goal to seal it and Day had his first national championship.
With all the pressure piled on him and all the criticism that made its way into this program a little less than two months ago, it was blatantly obvious how much the win meant to Day. As time ran out, he ran down the sideline and ripped off his headset, tossing it behind him somewhere deep on the Buckeye sideline – if not the stands. He reveled in the Gatorade bath, deep green liquid splashing down around him as he celebrated with his team.
“The story gets to be told now. And it’s a great story. About a bunch of guys that overcome some really tough situations and there was a point where there was a lot of people that counted us out,” Day said.
“We just kept swinging and kept fighting. It’s the reason you get into coaching. It’s to see guys overcome things. Learn life lessons and then reach their dreams. This is what happened tonight.”
