OSU’s Ryan Day Explains Why Freshmen Should Stay for Two Years Before Transferring

During an appearance on Josh Pate’s College Football Show, Ryan Day shared why he strongly supports the idea of freshmen staying at schools for at least two years before entering the transfer portal.

“I feel pretty strong about that,” Day said. “I do.”

The Ohio State head coach explained that today’s freshmen often arrive on campus emotionally and physically drained before their college careers even truly begin.

Many early enrollees finish a long high school season and immediately jump into winter workouts, spring practice, summer conditioning, and then a full college football season without much of a break.

“If you’re looking at the player who comes in at midyear now, there’s a lot,” Day said. “Their season gets done, like you said, they jump right into spring ball.”

Then comes the difficult reality of freshman year at a major college football program.

“During that freshman season, typically they’re not playing as much as they’d like,” Day said. “They’re going through challenges. They’re failing, but that’s part of being a freshman.”

For Day, that struggle is not something to avoid. It is part of the development process.

“You got to fail. You got to fail to learn. That’s how it works.”

The pressure surrounding recruiting only adds to it. Players arrive on campus with massive expectations, social media attention, and years of hype behind them.

“There’s all these expectations in recruiting,” Day said.

When things do not immediately go according to plan, Day believes the current transfer portal setup can push players toward emotional decisions before they have truly had time to grow.

“When their freshman year doesn’t go exactly the way they want, they get done in December and January and there’s no cooling off phase right there,” Day said. “It’s emotional. It’s raw.”

That is why Day believes players would benefit from mentally committing themselves to at least two years in one program.

“I think the mindset of saying, ‘I’m somewhere for two years,’” Day said. “I’m not going to come up for a year and try to reassess this again.”

According to Day, players often become completely different people after two full years inside a college football program.

“I come in, I work in the spring, I go through my freshman year, I go through another spring, I go through my sophomore year, and now I’m in a different place than I would have been before,” Day said.

The Ohio State coach also believes learning how to work through difficult moments is healthy for student-athletes long term.

“I know I have to push through adversity along the way and I got to grow,” Day said.

Later in the conversation, Day reflected on how different college football looked before the NIL and transfer portal era.

"For a lot of us that went through that where you had four years, transferring wasn’t an option...you had to figure it out. That’s a healthy thing."

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