It’s probably fair to say that Ryan Day is the first coach in college football history to amass a 61-8 record, yet still have something to prove. And it’s not just nationally, but with his own intense, and occasionally desperate, fan base.

It’s never easy succeeding a larger-than-life legend, a bill that fits Urban Meyer. So Day knew the challenges that came from the advantage of getting the keys to the Buckeyes Lamborghini.

He’s been derided as being born on third base by getting Ohio State as his first head coaching job, but he’s a former New Hampshire quarterback who overcame, at age 9, the death of his father by suicide, to grind his way to the top.

Six seasons in, Day, 45, has succeeded. Well, except for the part where some people point more to those eight losses than those 61 victories.

Day is 1-6 against teams in the top five of the College Football Playoff rankings. He is 1-3 against Michigan overall, including losses in each of the last three years. He is 1-3 in the College Football Playoff.

Ohio State has a reputation for steamrolling weaker opponents. Day has never lost to an unranked team and is unbeaten against every Big Ten team that isn’t located in Ann Arbor. That’s not nothing.

It even can beat the occasional highly ranked team, but the joy seems not to last. In 2020, it took down Clemson in the College Football Playoff … only to get blown out by Alabama in the title game.

Last season, it won late at Notre Dame, which was No. 9 at the time, but no one was overwhelmingly impressed because the Irish rarely win big ones either and Day spent the postgame seemingly challenging Lou Holtz to a fight.

And so, even as Ohio State (5-0) has blown out Akron, Western Michigan, Marshall, Michigan State and Iowa to the tune of 230-34, there remains doubts both in Columbus and across the country.

Sure, the Buckeyes can be bullies, but can they bully a bully? Can this team win it all?

No. 3 Oregon awaits Saturday in Eugene, a seemingly fair fight for the Bucks. It’ll count in the race for a Big Ten title, a playoff berth and playoff seeding. And it will count on the reputation, both near and far, of Ryan Day.

“A lot is at stake this weekend, which is exactly the way we want it,” Day said.

Nothing will be decided on Saturday, but it’s fair to watch and wonder. If not this year, then when? If not with this team, then why not?

The Buckeyes are always talented and Day has proven to be every bit the elite recruiter, especially nationally, that Meyer was. Yet as good as the roster always looks, this year is something else.

During the summer Meyer declared this “might be the best roster in college football in the last decade.” As bold of a statement as that was, nothing it has shown so far suggests Meyer is wrong.

Ohio State followed the Michigan playbook this year in using NIL money to encourage NFL-caliber players to skip the draft and return to campus for a national title run.

That meant guys such as running back TreVeyon Henderson, cornerback Denzel Burke, wideout Emeka Egbuka and defensive lineman J.T. Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer — among others — all came back from an 11-1 regular season team.

Then Day hit the transfer portal to add quarterback Will Howard (Kansas State) and more running back depth in Quinshon Judkins (Ole Miss).

The Buckeyes’ two best players are actually newcomers — safety Caleb Downs, who arrived from Alabama after Nick Saban’s retirement, and true freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who Ohio State beat Miami and Florida State to sign last February.

It’s a breathtaking collection. Anything can happen in Autzen Stadium, but one of those “anythings” is a show of force that has the rest of the country sitting up and wondering if Ohio State can be beaten. The Buckeyes are 3.5-point favorites.

So Day walks into another big game projecting confidence. He likes to say it’s about Ohio State, not who Ohio State is playing. Internally, he’s likely correct. Externally though?

“I think you always try to make sure you identify the things that fit the team,” Day said. “You know, all of a sudden you don’t just change because it’s a quote-unquote big game. They’re all big.

“If we say it’s about us all the time, then it’s about us in the games like this, which it is. So we’re going to continue with the same routine.”

Ryan Day has done a great job at Ohio State, just not great enough for some. On Saturday, he’s got the stage to begin to prove himself capable of reaching that final level.

He’s certainly got the team to get there.

The byproduct of Ohio State having a schedule that featured five consecutive games against overmatched opponents to begin the season is the Buckeyes haven’t really been a fixture of the national conversation.

Blowouts of inferior opponents prove nothing. We know Ohio State is good. But it’s been a long, boring wait until Oct. 12, the day Ohio State travels to Oregon to prove just how good it is.

“I think it’s great because we get to control own destiny,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said of the matchup with the Ducks. “You’re playing the best teams in the league on our schedule. That part is great. Every time you’re you’re playing one of these teams, you’re fighting for opportunity to go to Indianapolis. That’s important. There’s that part of it, and there’s obviously the Playoff scenario. So, a lot is at stake this weekend.”

A lot is at stake this weekend, but not as much with the College Football Playoff as you think. This could be the first of two (or even three) Ohio State matchups with Oregon this season. The loser of this game isn’t going to be any less in the Playoff picture than the winner. That’s the reality of the sport now with the 12-team Playoff field.

How the country continues to view Day, and this Ohio State program is at stake. Everyone knows Ohio State can be a giant against smaller teams. Can it be a giant against other giants? This is a huge game for Day to prove that it can.

Ohio State doesn’t lose games it shouldn’t under his leadership. The Buckeyes have yet to drop a game to an unranked team or suffer an embarrassing upset like the one Alabama just lived through Saturday. But in the last three years, the Buckeyes have only been so-so when as it pertains to winning games the Buckeyes fan base craves. And, as a result, it hasn’t gone to Indianapolis to play for the Big Ten Championship since 2020.

The first thing many fans think about Day is how his Buckeyes have lost three-consecutive games to Michigan. Those losses hurt because it’s a passionate rivalry and Ohio State had become so used to winning it. It’s the one game on the schedule — regardless of conference title hunts or Playoff situation — Ohio State has to win. And it hasn’t been winning.

But in totality? Ohio State is 3-5 against top-10 opponents since the beginning of the 2021 season. It beat Notre Dame on the road a year ago. It blew out a Michigan State team that was ranked in the top-10 a few years ago. But it lost to Michigan three times and fell short against Georgia in the Playoff two years ago. The games Ohio State fans really, really wanted the Buckeyes didn’t get.

For some Ohio State fans, that has called into question whether Day — inarguably a great program-builder — has what is needed to get these Buckeyes to where they need to go. A coach can do everything right at Ohio State. He could build a great roster, win a bunch of games, compete for national titles, all of it. But if he can’t beat Michigan, that overshadows proficiency in all other areas.

As things look right now, Michigan may not be an issue for Ohio State this year. There is plenty of time for the Wolverines to figure its offense to give the Buckeyes a problem in November in Ohio Stadium. Go look a how the 1990s went if you need an example of how things can go haywire. Still, Ohio State may be a three-score favorite in that matchup.

In the present moment? This Oregon game is the one Ohio State has to have. Oregon is a supremely-talented team, is now a conference foe and the Ducks have national title aspirations of their own. This is good on good.

This isn’t a win or go home scenario. But if Ohio State loses? That would mean the Ohio State trend of coming up short in the games Buckeyes fans crave the most is continuing into this season. It casts doubt on where Ohio State seems to be headed.

Ohio State should be considered the favorite to win it all this year. By many, it is. In the AP Poll, five of the top-10 teams in the country have already lost. Georgia has lost. Alabama has lost. Tennessee has lost. Clemson has lost. Ole Miss has lost. Many of the preseason national title contenders have already either lost or shown weakness. At times on Saturday, it truly did feel like everyone sucks.

Texas remains unbeaten and Miami avoided a disaster of its own Saturday night with a thrilling comeback victory over Cal. But Ohio State and Oregon? These are two teams who have yet to lose that many thought could win a national title this year, and even the Ducks have looked shaky at times this season.

There are plenty of people who are waiting for Ohio State to be the next to fall. They’ve looked at all the blowouts the Buckeyes have racked up this year and are unmoved by what they’ve seen. They shouldn’t be. Day isn’t at Ohio State to blow out Western Michigan. So doubters have started with the go-to lines:

“They’ll blow it when it matters”

“Ohio State comes up short against the good teams”

“The Buckeyes are a fraud like they always are. You’ll see.”

People have a right to say those things. Ohio State has come up short far too often the last three years. But have those people really taken the time to examine what Ohio State built this year?

This Ohio State team is what Michigan was last year, except it is starting at a higher baseline talent level. It has a ton of players who should be in the NFL right now who instead opted to return to Columbus to get back to winning.

Guys like defensive linemen J.T. Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer, receiver Emeka Egbuka and cornerback Denzel Burke — among others — are still in college. Then the Buckeyes added quarterback Will Howard, running back Quinshon Judkins and star safety Caleb Downs to the mix through the portal. Oh, and Ohio State’s leading receiver is true freshman Jeremiah Smith, who, despite his age, already has a case for being the best wideout in the sport.

Ohio State has never been short of talent and it has lost some games to teams that don’t stack up in that department. Stars matter. They aren’t everything anymore.

But when you hear former coach Urban Meyer say this is the most impressive collection of talent he’s seen at Ohio State, know he isn’t being hyperbolic. The coach who won the 2014 national title with an immensely deep and talented Buckeyes roster is looking at this group with googly eyes.

There is no reason Ohio State shouldn’t be dominant this year. Ohio State’s reputation — which has been earned through losing these types of games — is still getting in the way of how it’s perceived publicly.

Against Oregon? Yes, there is a ton of pressure.

“Which is exactly how we want it,” Day said.

That’s nice to say.

Now is time for Day to get the job done.

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) — On Saturday, the Hamtramck Police Department said it received notice from authorities in Ohio of a threat against the city’s immigrant population.

Police said the details came from someone at a church in Toledo who alerted local authorities that a man named William Dorocha came to speak to a priest, then allegedly told others in the church he was going to “take care of immigrants in Hamtramck.” 

“We have the most diverse population in the state,” Hamtramck Police Chief Jamiel Altaheri told CBS Detroit. “We knew we had to act fast.”

Altaheri called in the department’s criminal intelligence analyst, Andrew Robinson, who got to work tracking Darocha’s license plate.

“That’s how we determined his car was still in the Toledo area,” Robinson said. “So, we kept an eye on it while we gathered more details.”

Robinson said hours went by and they were preparing to wrap up the case and head home when Dorocha started driving again. 

“I was just going to check one more time, and I saw him cross the border into Michigan,” Robinson said. “I saw he was in Taylor (Michigan). And that’s when things ramped up for a second time.”

Hamtramck police quickly alerted Taylor authorities, who apprehended the suspect. Initially, he was placed into FBI custody, who then transported him back to Toledo. Officers say he had no weapons at the time he was found.

Altaheri told CBS News Detroit he’s grateful no one was injured. He added that this is a new reality he wishes his department wasn’t forced to confront.

“No one should be afraid to walk in their own neighborhood regardless of their race, religion or origin,” Altaheri said. “We want to make sure everyone is safe, but that they feel safe.”

CBS News has contacted Taylor police and Toledo police for more details about the incident, but we have not heard back.