Day and the Buckeyes were beaten by their bitter rivals and booed off their home field less than 2 months ago. Now they have a shot at winning it all.
It’ll be 51 days between Ryan Day’s worst moment as the Ohio State football coach, a shocking 13-10 loss to Michigan on Nov. 30, and potentially his greatest: winning the national title if the Buckeyes can beat Notre Dame on Monday.
It is the overarching storyline of the College Football Playoff game. This a coach and his team getting up off the canvas, showered by boos and shrouded in doubt, to potentially win four playoff games and the big trophy in the end.
To do so would be a testament to the team, to trust, to character and to resilience. Oh, and plenty of great players.
Every year someone wins it all. In no year has anyone won it like this; with so many calls for the head coaches firing at the start of the playoffs.
Yet until the scarlet and gray confetti falls — no guarantee against a talented, tenacious Fighting Irish team — a measure of pressure remains on Day.
No, he isn’t going to get dismissed if the Buckeyes lose on Monday, the way so many wanted after his fourth consecutive defeat to the hated Wolverines.
Day will be back in Columbus next year, as he should. He’s an excellent coach, a tremendous roster builder and a great representative of the program’s proud tradition.
And yet he still kind of needs to win Monday, if only to begin to put behind him the doubts and critics focused on his ability to win big games.
A loss to the Irish would not be as painful as a loss to the Wolverines, and not as devastating to his job security as, say, a loss to Tennessee in the first round would have been. It would be a gut-punch nonetheless.
This is the conundrum Day resides in.
Getting to the championship game behind some brilliant play has helped erase the sting of Michigan, but it also re-raised the belief that this is a uniquely talented Ohio State team. It has reset the expectations that the Buckeyes are overwhelming favorites — 8.5 points, per Las Vegas.
Day knows he is fortunate that the playoff expanded to 12 teams this season. It didn’t just shift the focus — and anger — away from the rivalry game loss. It also allowed his two-loss squad this very shot at redemption by having everyone address what got them in trouble originally.
“Very, very grateful,” Day said this week. “I think everybody in the program is [grateful] to be in this situation, for a lot of reasons.
“I do think the new format has allowed our team to grow and build throughout the season,” Day continued. “And as much as losses hurt, they really allow us as coaches and players to take a hard look at the issues and get them addressed, and then it’s about the business of getting them fixed as time goes on.”
That “fix” is what has been most impressive.
When Ohio State was at their best over the last three games, they looked to be an unstoppable juggernaut, flattening Tennessee and Oregon. The offense was free and aggressive, a far cry from the failures against Michigan. Star receiver Jeremiah Smith has been a focus. Day has even been seen smiling and laughing on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, they won the semifinal over Texas mostly because of a defense that has been tenacious almost all season long, with a propensity for goal-line stands.
“Our motto is: ‘Give us an inch and we’ll defend it,’” star linebacker Jack Sawyer said.
This is the Ohio State team everyone expected. This is the one full of veterans who turned down the NFL Draft to come back and finish business. This is the product of a healthy, $20-million NIL payroll. This is the team that, back in the offseason, had former coaches Urban Meyer and Jim Tressel gushing over the talent, with Meyer declaring it better than any college team he’d ever seen.
All of that is what made the loss to an 8-5 Michigan team so stunning. It shouldn’t have been close. Day coached one of the worst games imaginable. There is no excuse.
What followed were calls for his job and 25,000-plus Tennessee fans scooping up tickets in Ohio Stadium for a playoff game — a sign of distrust that had cemented among Ohio State supporters.
Now tens of thousands of Buckeyes fans will descend on Atlanta expecting to see the program’s first national title since the 2014 season.
If it happens, then Ryan Day will lead a parade through Columbus and rolls into the offseason still with a Michigan-problem, but a championship-level ability to shrug and smile.
If it doesn’t though, if Ohio State falls as a heavy favorite again … it may not be back to square one like in November.
It’ll be close, though.
