Behind the scenes of Ryan Day’s redemption and Ohio State’s new-age title
Ohio State defeats Notre Dame 34-23 to become College Football Playoff champions. (4:52)
ATLANTA — As Monday night hurtled toward Tuesday morning, Ryan Day hustled into the head coach enclave in the Ohio State locker room at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Day opened his office fridge, cracked a 16-ounce Garage beer, poured it into a to-go cup festooned with smiling Buckeyes faces and bounded toward the team bus.
The players had long cleared out, and all that remained was the tornado of ankle tape, shoulder pads and discarded cleats. Giddy Buckeyes managers blasted “Chicken Fried,” and the distinct difference from the normal carnage of an empty locker room was the thick layer of smoke.
The heavy cigar fog hung near the ceiling, pounded the nostrils and offered a symbol — a smoke signal, if you will — of a new reality for Day and the Buckeyes. They’d just completed a historic run to kick off a new college football era, and the win for Day in his sixth full season catapulted him from an elite coach perpetually on the cusp to one who finally broke through.
Day slung his backpack over his shoulder, left his black dress shoes behind and walked with his drink to toast an improbable title forged through the fire. As he made his way through the windy concourse to start the celebration, Day encapsulated the core of this team’s redemptive narrative arc.
“It feels great,” Day told ESPN, “and it probably feels better because it was hard.”
Everything about this Buckeyes title was difficult, right down to the final minute, when a 31-7 lead gave way to a one-score game. There was nothing easy about a path that ended with Ohio State beating more top-five teams — Penn State, Indiana, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame — than any team in the history of the sport. (The teams with four are 2019 LSU, 1967 USC and 1943 Notre Dame.)
And so it’s fitting that the Buckeyes’ coaching staff had to bet big one last time and call a go ball on third-and-11 to precocious freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith with 2:38 remaining. He hauled in the 56-yard pass from Will Howard, and a 33-yard field goal turned a one-score game into a 34-23 final.
Day’s visceral reaction in the Buckeyes’ locker room in front of the team after the game resonated as a catharsis. There were external calls for his job after Ohio State suffered its fourth straight loss to Michigan and a security detail guarding his home for an extended period in the aftermath. Things were so dark that his father-in-law, Stan Spirou, told ESPN he stayed in town for 10 more days after the game just to support the family.
“Just to help the family out because there were some tough times there,” Spirou said. “Know what I mean? Tough times. Having security and so forth. And tonight was a redemption tour. And I think the whole playoff thing was to win four. … It’s hard enough to win one ballgame. And they won four, and they did it the hard way.”
And with that final win, Day goes from the coach in the fish bowl to a coach with a national championship, joining Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney as the only active FBS coaches with a title. Day’s 87.5 winning percentage (70-10) makes him the sport’s active FBS leader in that category. Through 80 games, Day trails only Walter Camp and Knute Rockne.
This title resonates like Smart’s first one back in 2021. Like Day’s title, Smart’s came in his sixth season after losing a previous title game. It took Swinney nine seasons and a loss in the title game before he captured his first.
Day’s team got blown out by a juggernaut Alabama squad in the national title game after the 2020 season and suffered near-misses against Clemson (2019) and Georgia (2023) in the CFP semifinals.
“Nothing great was ever achieved without going through a lot of adversity along the way,” Day said. “Not to overstate it, but for coaches, we’re in this profession and it can take you to your knees. You’ve just got to keep swinging and fighting. And it’s not always easy.”
Until Monday night, Day’s sporting history had been riddled with painful near-misses. There was the 3-pointer that rimmed out in his high school basketball days, against a team led by future NBA mainstay Matt Bonner. As a college quarterback at UNH, there was a fake extra point attempt that fell incomplete in a double-overtime loss to Southern Florida.
There were the two one-score losses to Michigan the past two years, the latest of which left Day with bags of stress under his eyes. He jokingly attributed weight loss to the Ohio State diet, alluding to the stomach churn of coaching there.
“He was like Sisyphus, pushing the rock halfway up the hill, three quarters of the way up,” Spirou said. “And I told Ryan, ‘Trust me that thing’s going to go over the hill.’ And it happened tonight. I couldn’t be any happier and more proud of the way he picked himself up after that Michigan game. He got up the next day and he says, ‘I’m going after this.’ He just went to work.”
Added Day’s brother, Tim: “There’s a look in his eye that was extremely rewarding to see as his brother. And it goes back to the days that we grew up. For him to win this one is extremely rewarding for our family.”
The look only arrived after two dramatic field-flipping plays that sealed the final two games. The go-ball to Smith, who’d cruised past vulnerable Irish corner Christian Gray out on an island, will be the final highlight. And it will resonate in Ohio State lore alongside Jack Sawyer‘s strip/scoop/score after tomahawking his old roommate Quinn Ewers in the Buckeyes’ win over Texas.
“Those are the plays that you remember the rest of your life,” Day told ESPN, “Jeremiah’s play and Jack’s play. You have those special moments to win a championship.”
Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly is essentially family to Day. He recruited him to New Hampshire as a quarterback, employed him in the NFL with the Eagles and 49ers and has been a wise-cracking constant in his life.
So it’s fitting that on that pivotal third-and-11 from the Ohio State 34-yard line, the old friends discussed the conundrum of either playing conservative or sealing the game.
“It was kind of an easy call,” Kelly said. “I don’t think it was a gamble.”
Kelly figured they were putting the ball in Howard’s hands, they’d have max protection to stave off any negative play and Howard would either exploit man coverage on the outside or have an answer for any type of zone that Notre Dame ran.
The result was a chunk play that Smith hauled in at the 28-yard line and ran down to the 10.
“I mean, that call right there at the end with Jeremiah Smith, that’s Ryan Day,” former Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. “He wasn’t conservative and he let it go. And so I’m really proud of him.
“It’s so rewarding to see him up there and see him go through what he went through and then respond the way he did by leading this program and these kids.”
Ohio State’s 2024 national title will serve as a beacon for changing the way college football seasons are viewed. The sport had long been unique in its necessity for perfection — or certainly near perfection. Every loss at a blueblood program prompts storm clouds, and the sport’s history is filled with high-end teams that never reached the pinnacle. The variance of things needed to happen to win a national title have long been part of its lore.
But the sport’s professionalization has come with super leagues, annual free agency and a 12-team playoff. And the confluence of those modern factors has given us the dichotomy of a champion that can be imperfect in the regular season as long as it can ride through a postseason gauntlet.
“It’s still a game,” Day said. “A ball can bounce a certain way. We could get a call. That’s why I kept saying all year: Leave no doubt. Leave no doubt.”
There’s little doubt that everything will soon change for Day. He completed the full arc that included a partial revolt from his fan base, a home playoff game against Tennessee appearing like a road game and being stuck in the purgatory of coaching great teams that didn’t finish the job.
As he carried his beer on to the team bus to start a celebration with friends and family that went long into the evening, Day stepped into the new reality for his coaching career.
“Ohio State is not for everybody,” he said. “But this win cements this team as one of the best in Ohio State history. Over the last 50 years, this is just the third team that’s won the national championship. And I think that gives some pause to be like, ‘Wow, that’s a great team and great accomplishment in the new era.'”
