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Ohio State football players never lost trust in Ryan Day to lead them to national title
ATLANTA – Ohio State coach Ryan Day escaped injury Monday night inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium when the driver of the cart used to transport him and two players to the postgame interview room struck a concrete corridor wall.
The collision was more comical than scary. OSU quarterback, Will Howard, seated behind his coach, laughed about it. But regardless of the danger level, Day’s players are convinced the accident never would have happened if their coach had been driving. Because the man they love and trust never hits the wall.
“There were times when I would get in early to the Woody (practice facility) and thinking I’m getting work done, and I would walk past coach’s office and he’s already there,” linebacker Cody Simon said Tuesday. “He’s been watching film and his eyes are bloodshot. He puts that extra time in that no one else in the world is putting in.
“When I see that, there is no one I’d rather trust than coach Day, and I wholeheartedly believe he is, and always will be, the best coach I’ve ever been a part of. The story of our entire team is we all trusted in the leadership of coach Day.”
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Trusting is not how I would describe the public attitude toward Day after this season’s 13-10 loss to Michigan, when it felt like a majority of Ohio State fans wondered if the 45-year-old coach was right for the job.
But Day’s players never wavered in their support, even when that wall – the one he never hits – began to collapse on him.
Ryan Day fan support dropped after losses to Oregon, Michigan
It began after the first meeting with Oregon, when critics lambasted Day for getting outsmarted by Ducks coach Dan Lanning. But that was nothing compared to Michigan, when Day rightfully got grilled for buttoning the offense, which played into the paws of the Wolverines.
At that point, social media put out an all points bulletin on finding Day … another job outside Columbus. Four consecutive losses to Michigan was too hard to stomach.
Players saw it differently. You don’t easily give up on someone who never gives up on you, and to hear them tell it, Day is a father figure who would take a bullet for them.
“We think he’s the best coach in the country, and we’d do anything for him,” safety Jordan Hancock said, shouting Monday night above the din of a raucous locker room following the 34-23 win over Notre Dame. “We love this program so much and we love coach Day so much.”
That refrain, “We love coach Day so much,” was a recurring refrain through the locker room. And I have to admit the emotion behind those words got to me, because it was real.
It’s easy to tell when players are blowing smoke about how much they like their coach, when it’s just what you’re supposed to say. This was not that. This was genuine.
“It’s not hard to believe,” senior wide receiver Emeka Egbuka said of winning the national championship. “The reason we’re able to be in this moment is because everybody believed.”
Believed in themselves. Believed in the Brotherhood. Believed in their coach.
“I never doubted our head coach,” Egbuka said. “I see the hours he puts in and how much he cares for this team. It’s so genuine. To see the backlash and ridicule he gets online, people saying to fire him, when I see what the real is.”
Egbuka, a quiet and too often overlooked leader of the offense, did not hold back in sharing how it bothers him that “There are going to be people in his corner now who weren’t in his corner a couple weeks ago. But everyone on this team has belief in him.”
Wide receiver Brandon Inniss took it a step further.
“They’re not questioning us anymore, or coach Day, either,” he said. “That was our biggest thing. We were playing for him. Everyone kept doubting him and telling him he wasn’t a good coach, but we came together for him and won a national championship.”
Will Howard owes Ryan Day his football life
Finally, there is Howard, who worked more closely with Day than anyone.
It is one thing to like your coach. It is something else to talk about him with such loving care and kindness that it feels like a group hug just happened.
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day describes emotions of beating Notre Dame
Ohio State’s Ryan Day discusses the journey his team went on to become college football national champions.
Sports Pulse
“First and foremost, I owe so much to this guy,” Howard said of Day. “He gave me a chance here and he bet on me and I am forever indebted to him for that.”
Day coached Howard hard, nitpicking and developing him into the type of efficient and accurate quarterback it takes to win a national title.
“He’s probably the best coach I’ve ever been around,” Howard continued. “I’ve never seen someone work a game like coach Day does. None of us ever doubted that he was the right guy to lead this team. We stuck together and said we want to do it for each other and for our coach.”
And they did.
roller@dispatch.com
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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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