Culture
After an embarrassing Cotton Bowl loss, Ohio State donors went on a spending spree
COLUMBUS, Ohio — At his postgame news conference following Ohio State’s 30-24 loss to Michigan last November, Buckeyes coach Ryan Day looked defeated and despondent. He surely realized at that moment that despite winning 88 percent of his games as a head coach, he and his program would now be defined by their unthinkable three-year losing streak to the Wolverines.
Four-plus months later, sitting in his office at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, the 45-year-old Day is smiling, giddy and seemingly at ease. He exudes the confidence of a coach who knows how loaded his roster is, after getting back nearly every one of Ohio State’s juniors who could have turned pro while adding some of the most accomplished transfers in the portal.
“At Ohio State, you’ve got to beat the Team Up North and win every other game,” Day said. “If that’s the expectation every year, you like your chances a lot more when you have good players. So, might as well get the best.”
If not for NIL, Day said, “You certainly wouldn’t have seen what you’ve seen this year with us.”
Following an embarrassing 14-3 Cotton Bowl loss to Missouri, Ohio State donors went on a spending spree. With the help of two collectives, The Foundation and The 1870 Society, the program “re-signed” defensive linemen JT Tuimoloau, Jack Sawyer and Tyleik Williams, running back TreVeyon Henderson, receiver Emeka Egbuka, cornerback Denzel Burke and guard Donovan Jackson, all of whom were projected first- or second-day draft picks.
“Coming in, our (2021) recruiting class was very stout. We knew we were able to do something special,” said Jackson, one of six five-star signees in his class. “But at the end of three years here, we didn’t accomplish the goals that we set out to do. NIL is a controversial topic, but in this case, it gave us the reassurance to come back and get after it one more time.”
With the core of his roster returning, Day went into the portal to plug the few remaining holes. His haul included All-Big 12 quarterback Will Howard (Kansas State), All-SEC running back Quinshon Judkins (Ole Miss), freshman All-American safety Caleb Downs (Alabama) and experienced center Seth McLaughlin (Alabama).
The backfield tandem of Henderson and Judkins could be particularly frightening. Together they’ve rushed for a combined 5,470 career yards and 63 career TDs.
“We don’t decide who’s in the portal,” Day said. “But when guys are there, we want to upgrade our roster in certain areas.”
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Before that Dec. 29 bowl game, Ohio State was not considered a major player in the NIL-fueled portal market. In fact, retiring AD Gene Smith was one of the most vocal critics calling on the NCAA to crack down on the involvement of collectives in recruiting. This was two months before a federal judge in Tennessee ruled that the NCAA cannot enforce rules preventing collectives from negotiating NIL deals with recruits.
Even after 2023 starting quarterback Kyle McCord entered the portal shortly after last year’s Michigan game, and with third-string freshman Lincoln Kienholz flailing against Missouri, ESPN broadcaster Dave Pasch told viewers throughout the Cotton Bowl that Day had been adamant Ohio State would not pursue another quarterback.
Five days later, Howard, who had previously visited Miami and USC, committed to the Buckeyes. Tellingly, when Downs committed to the Buckeyes on Jan. 19 from Alabama, The Foundation broke the news on Twitter.
Welcome to THE, @caleb_downs2, our newest Student Athlete partner! Caleb is going to do great work on and off the field as an ambassador for our charity partners and in the Columbus community. (Boom 😉) https://t.co/htkLB83pbF pic.twitter.com/bNvKx3BPRO
— THE Foundation (@TheFoundation1_) January 20, 2024
Two years ago, Day told an audience of businesspeople it would take $13 million in NIL money to maintain Ohio State’s roster. Today, it’s believed the budget is even higher than that.
“We had a lot of people step up and really help us,” said Day. “Gene (Smith) is obviously instrumental in this, but I made a lot of calls, and a lot of people stepped up. It just goes to show you how great the support here is.”
With the personnel in place, Day made one more big decision: finding a renowned offensive coordinator to whom he could hand over play-calling for the first time in his career. After his initial choice, Bill O’Brien, left in February to become the head coach at Boston College, Day placed a call to his former college coach at New Hampshire — Chip Kelly. In a stunning move, Kelly gave up being the head coach at Big Ten-bound UCLA to come work for Day, who worked under Kelly at the Eagles and 49ers before coming to Ohio State in 2018.
“I didn’t think of it that way,” said the 60-year-old Kelly, who enjoyed returning to his roots when he coached UCLA’s quarterbacks leading up to their bowl game. “Coaching football makes me happy. It’s as simple as that.
“I never wanted to get into athletic administration, but the head coaching job is turning into that at certain places. I have a hard time asking people for money.”
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That’s Day’s job now.
The fruits of all that fundraising work will be on display Saturday, as Fox is televising Ohio State’s spring game for the first time. Viewers will get a chance to check in on the quarterback battle between Howard and returnee Devin Brown. They’ll get their first glimpse of freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith, who has been so dazzling during spring camp that coaches already speak of him as a starter.
Smith, the No. 1 recruit in the 2024 class, had been committed to Ohio State for more than a year but caused a stir on the first day of the early signing period last December when he did not sign his letter of intent until that night. The explanation, as reported by The Athletic’s Manny Navarro, was that “Smith’s NIL rep was making sure whatever Ohio State’s collective had promised Smith during the recruiting process would also be in writing.”
Jeremiah Smith 😳 pic.twitter.com/8tG66Yltsn
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) April 6, 2024
But besides Smith and rising sophomores Downs and receiver Carnell Tate, Ohio State’s starting lineup will consist almost entirely of fourth- or fifth-year players. As many as 17 positions could be occupied by players with at least a year of full-time starting experience, including nearly the entirety of a defense that finished last season third in the country (4.2 yards per play allowed).
All of which was an intentional push by Day.
“We’ve been talented here in the past, but when you lose guys to the NFL after three years, you can quickly get young again,” he said. “I’ve identified that the last couple of years, wanting to be talented but also wanting to be experienced. I’ve noticed some of the teams we played have been a little bit more of 21-, 22-years old, and I think that matters.”
He won’t say it, but those teams were Michigan’s.
For all that talent, though, Ohio State does have two question marks — and they happen to be at arguably the two most important positions. One is the offensive line, which struggled at times last season. Returning starters Jackson and tackle Josh Simmons, a 2023 transfer from San Diego State, have the left side locked down, but the right side remains in flux.
And then there’s the quarterback. While Howard has started 27 games and led K-State to the 2022 Big 12 championship, no one would confuse him for Justin Fields or C.J. Stroud. He’s not yet beat out Brown, who was injured early in his first career start in the Cotton Bowl. But Howard also presents the staff an opportunity as the program’s first true dual-threat QB since Fields in 2020.
“We felt like Will was a really good fit for our team for a lot of reasons,” said Day. “I’m kind of excited to see how he fits in with Chip’s offense.”
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In some ways, “Chip’s offense” was already Ohio State’s offense. It’s mostly the same passing game Day brought with him from Kelly’s 49ers when he was hired as OC by Urban Meyer, just with different terminology. Kelly says he’s had to catch himself calling a play by the wrong name at practice on occasion.
But Kelly’s impact should be felt most in the running game. Ohio State’s offense under Day has been criticized at times for being too finesse (hence, his infamous Lou Holtz rant after last year’s Notre Dame win). While Kelly no longer runs his early 2010s Oregon offense, his UCLA teams were still synonymous with a power rushing attack. In 2022, with dual-threat Dorian Thompson Robinson at quarterback and star tailback Zach Charbonnet behind him, the Bruins led the country at 6.0 yards per carry.
Now he’ll be working with Henderson and Judkins.
“I think (Kelly) likes some of the tools that he has to work with,” Day said with a smile. “Our pass game has been very, very successful, and his run game has been very, very successful. So as we combine the two of those, it’s been fun.”
What with all that talent, all those donors’ generosity and the splashy offensive coordinator hire, the bar has not been this high in Columbus since Meyer’s Buckeyes were coming off their 2014 national title. Ending the Michigan drought will be a baseline expectation, but Ohio State needs to at least play for its first national championship in a decade, a task made harder this season with the 12-team Playoff.
“This wasn’t like it’s broken,” said Day. “The truth is, we’ve been a play or drive away for the last two years from achieving our goals. We haven’t beaten our rival the last couple of years, that’s stung, but we were one play away against Georgia (in the 2022 semifinal). We’re trying to figure out that last 1 percent, 2 percent. Those last few plays.”
And Ohio State has thrown a lot of money into figuring out those last few plays.
(Photo: Jason Mowry / Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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