A Jersey Guy: OSU's Day Has Arrived
He is not Nick Saban, not yet anyway.
He is not Urban Meyer, although there is linkage.
But Ryan Day's journey the past few years suggests that his coaching plateau is not close to being reached.
Consider his record as the 41-year old college football head coach at Ohio State, which is almost as high on the coaching tree as you can get.
A 23-1 record during for two seasons, including 0 losses during the regular season.
A pair of Big Ten titles .
Two CFP Final Four appearances in two years.
Day's newest hurdle appears to be his toughest, finding a way to stop the rolling Tide of No. 1 Alabama in Monday night's national championship game.
To better understand where Day is going, you need to start with where he has been and how the often fickle finger of fate put him at Ohio State a few years ago.
I've known Day since he first arrived at Boston College 19 years ago as a young graduate assistant on Tom O'Brien's staff out of the University of New Hampshire.
Day spent two years at BC, spent another year as a grad assistant at Florida, where he first met Meyer, who was then his first year of establishing a Gator Dynasty (two national championships in six years) in football.
He came back to BC as a wide receiver coach on first Jeff Jagodzinksi and then Frank Spaziani's staff.
As a former QB, Day had an offensive mind set, which he finally utilized as an offensive coordinator in 2012 when then Temple coach Steve Addazio hired him.
Day came back for his third stint at BC when the Eagles hired Addazio in 2013.
As a reporter for the Boston Globe covering college football and BC during that time frame, I new Day very well, having long discussions about where he wanted to go with a career which clearly needed a boost to become a head coach--at any level.
Part of Day's resume including a working relationship with Chip Kelly, another New Hampshire kid, who was the OC when Day was the QB.
Kelly's star was also on a fast track, which sent him from New Hampshire to Oregon and then to the NFL, which is where he was in 2015 when he was the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and was looking for a QB coach.
For Day, who had seemingly stalled out as the OC of a team which was also mired in mediocrity under Addazio, it was time to move to new challenges and perhaps opportunities in the NFL.
Although Day had only been with the Eagles for a few months, it became clear that Kelly's career in Philadelphia was in jeopardy. Even though Day had left BC, we kept in touch and were having a conversation about what his next move might be.
He asked me about potential openings in college and I mentioned Rutgers, which had continued to spiral downward since Greg Schiano had left for the NFL three years earlier under the direction of Kyle Flood.
Using Jersey Guy connections, I got Day's name on a list of potential candidates being put together by then Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann.
Here's where fate kicked in. Before Hermann could make a decision--and Day was seriously considered--she AND Flood were both fired.
At the end of the 2015 season, Kelly was also fired, which left Day at another cross roads, which then brought him to Columbus, Ohio where he was reunited with Meyer, who had already won another national championship and re-established the Buckeyes prominence.
There was a cost to this, however. Meyer had health issues, which had prompted his retirement as the coach at Florida after six seasons. He also had other internal issues at Ohio State, which, in the summer of 2018 prompted Ohio State to put Meyer on administrative leave for the first part of the season.
Again, fate kicks in. Day was in the right place--Meyer's --at the right time.
The Buckeyes won their first three games with Day running the show and won the rest of their games when Meyer came back, with an agreement that he would "resign'' after the Buckeyes Rose Bowl appearance on Jan 1, 2019.
Shortly, there after Day was named as the head coach of THE Ohio State University, which is light-years away from UNH, BC, Rutgers or any position job Day had in the NFL.
Two years later, the spotlight is still on what is almost a flawless record as a head coach--a semifinal loss to Clemson in the semifinals of last year's CFP playoffs is Ohio State's ONLY loss with Day as its head coach.
A year ago, Day signed a five year contract extension which is paying him more than $5 million dollars a year and will continue to escalate with built in raises, as well as performance clauses.
At 41, Day is sitting at the same table as Saban, who has six national championship rings, and Clemson's Dabo Swinney, who picked up two in three seasons and has established as the most dominant football program outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Day has had a bumpy season because of COVID issues and an assortment of other items which have cut the Buckeyes season almost in half, a series of events which has caused more than a few people to question the Buckeyes' presence in the Final Four.
A convincing 49-28 over Clemson on Friday silenced most of that chatter, but the Buckeyes are still a solid (8 point) underdog to Alabama.
Day said Ohio State's journey this season has been filled with challenges.
""We've played games with the majority of our offensive line out,'' he said. "We played the Big Ten championship without some of our top receivers. We''ve had starters all over the place at different times and we found ways to work through it. It's just been the way it is.
"And it's no different this week (starting QB Justin Fields has bruised ribs). We've got a new set of challenges this week. We're going to have to figure it out, go down to Miami and play.''
Barring a last minute tsunami of COVID-19 issues, that is what Ohio State will do.
While Alabama is the favorite with justification, Ohio State is capable of putting together 60 (or more) minutes of football to win.
In either case, it seems clear that the Ryan Day's Day has indeed come