Ohio
Ohio State football fans storm ‘The Horseshoe’ to celebrate national championship
Ohio State football championship: Reaction on campus at ‘The Shoe’
See students charge across campus to go to the “The Shoe.”
Ohio State football broke through, and then its fans broke in.
The Buckeyes won college football’s national championship Monday and the celebration into the wee hours of the night included an impromptu Ohio Stadium field storming by a group of intrepid fans back in Columbus, Ohio.
Students began flooding onto campus almost as soon as Ohio State’s 34-23 win over Notre Dame was over, the Columbus Dispatch reported, despite frigid temperatures in the Midwest. A crowd chanting “O-H,” “I-O,” eventually converged on “The Horseshoe” and successfully forced their way inside the venerable home of Ohio State football.
Videos shared on social media show swarms of fans ‒ some with flags, some dressed for the weather and some not wearing shirts ‒ holding up their phones to chronicle the scene as they walked en masse through the stadium tunnel and then spilled onto the familiar turf. Witnesses said police officers got in on the fun, taking photos for the fans reveling in the Buckeyes’ first national championship in football since 2014.
“It’s crazy. I was surprised that the cops are so supportive,” Natalie Freihammer, an Ohio State senior who took part in the celebration, told The Columbus Dispatch.
Ohio State underwent a remarkable turnaround over the past two months, rebounding from a loss to Michigan in its regular season finale to reel off four-straight wins and emerge on top of the sport once more after the first 12-team College Football Playoff. Losing to the Wolverines again led to more scrutiny about coach Ryan Day and the disappointment lingered into the Buckeyes’ first-round playoff game against Tennessee, when a larger-than-normal contingent of Volunteers’ fans were inside Ohio Stadium.
But Ohio State’s title run has muted those concerns and the fans returned in droves again Tuesday to welcome the Buckeyes back from Atlanta. The festivities will continue during an official celebration with the team and fans inside Ohio Stadium on Sunday at 12 p.m. ET, according to the university’s athletic department. Admission and parking are free, with more details to be released this week.
“There was a point where there was a lot of people that counted us out,” Day said after Monday’s game, “and we just kept swinging and kept fighting.”
Perhaps a few of those doubters were among the people breaking into Ohio Stadium after what these Buckeyes pulled off.
Ryan Day will have some very familiar competition in the Big 10 soon.
The son of the Ohio State football coach, R.J. Day, announced his commitment to Northwestern for the Class of 2027 on Sunday.
Northwestern plays in the same conference as Ohio State and the schools will face each other.
R.J. Day, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound quarterback from — not surprisingly — Columbus, Ohio, has started for three years at St. Francis DeSales HS as he heads towards his senior season.
According to reports, the younger Day had other offers from Purdue, Syracuse, Cincinnati and South Florida, as well as others.
Northwestern has eight quarterbacks on head coach David Braun’s roster.
And the offensive coordinator for the Wildcats is Chip Kelly, who served in the same role for Ryan Day at Ohio State when the Buckeyes won the title in 2024.
Kelly, the former head coach at UCLA and Oregon, was also the offensive coordinator at New Hampshire when Ryan Day was the team captain from 1998-2001.
Most recently, Kelly was the OC with the Las Vegas Raiders before he took the job with Northwestern.
“It’s really surreal when you think about the relationships that we’ve had with those two as a family over the years,” R.J. Day told ESPN earlier this month. “Coach Kelly coached my dad in college, so that adds another layer to it.”
Cincinnati Reds legend and well-known gambler Pete Rose was possibly more than just curious about Ohio State football’s 2012 season when he texted Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.
Appearing on “The Triple Option” show with Alabama running back Mark Ingram May 6, Meyer told a story about his relationship with Rose.
After OSU hired Meyer, the Reds asked him to throw out the first pitch at a game. Meyer threw to his son, Nathan, and walked into the dugout, where Rose, MLB’s all-time hit leader, was waiting to greet him.
“I couldn’t get enough talking about ‘Big Red Machine,’ and he wanted to talk college football,” Meyer said on the podcast, explaining how the two spoke for hours and exchanged numbers.
Meyer said that during his first season, Rose texted him early on. He wanted information about the team, like news on Braxton Miller’s shoulder injury.
“I told that to someone, and they said, ‘You’re an idiot. Do you know he’s trying to get information from you for gambling, and you could get in trouble?’ ” Meyer said.
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Though Meyer asserted that he never disclosed much, he started to steer the conversations clear of college football after he realized Rose potentially wanted information for gambling.
The two had another conversation in Las Vegas, where Rose told Meyer he gambled daily after retiring.
Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the sport, something he admitted to in his 2004 autobiography. Rose was reinstated in 2025 and so is considered eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Still baseball’s most prolific hitter (4,256 hits), Rose died in 2024.
GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) – Over 100 athletes came together for the 5th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational Saturday morning in Girard.
These athletes represent five different schools across Trumbull County to compete and spread the message of inclusion, achievement, and sportsmanship.
The Invitational continued its long-standing tradition of honoring the legacy of Randy Suchanek while celebrating the dedication and accomplishments of Special Olympics athletes throughout the region.
“You can hear all the excitement for this, for the athletes that are here today,” said superintendent Bryan O’Hara. “They work hard all year long to participate. We’ve always worked hand in hand with the rotary to get this accomplished is a lot of work behind the scenes.”
Participating schools included Ashtabula, Geauga, Columbiana, Kent-Portage and Trumbull Fairhaven
“There’s a lot of nice participation from girard students as you see behind us, and a lot of participation from the community helping out,” Girard-Liberty Rotary co-president Andy Kish added.
O’Hara added that the event keeps everything in perspective, seeing the athletes compete in the spirit of fun, along with the courage and determination that they show.
Alex Sorrells contributed to this report.
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