Ohio State football: ‘You’re built for this’
Just 40, first-time coach Ryan Day takes on one of college sports’ most pressure-packed jobs.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – The affirmation might not have been strictly necessary. Ryan Day does not lack for confidence, and he has good reason for it. But when the text buzzed into his phone last August, it was welcomed — and it wasn’t so much the message as the messenger.
Day had just been named Ohio State’s interim coach, tasked with guiding the Buckeyes through a tenuous time while Urban Meyer was suspended. When Chip Kelly texted “You’re built for this” — Day took it to heart.
“I just believed in it and kind of trusted it,” Day says, adding, “If you know Chip, he ain’t gonna text you if he doesn’t believe it.”
Kelly has known Day for most of his life; he recruited Day and has served as a mentor throughout his coaching career. We know what happened after that text: With Day running the program, the Buckeyes went 3-0. When Meyer retired at the end of the regular season, Day was promoted again, this time without the “interim” tag. And if it is still jarring to realize Ohio State handed the reins of its storied program to a guy who’d never been a head coach before, Kelly at least believes Day is built for the task.
“There’s never been a time I’ve seen him where the situation was too big for him,” Kelly says, “whether he was 12 years old or 39 years old.”
That seems clear as Day quietly explains why he’s ready to take on one of college football’s biggest jobs.
“I respect it and understand it,” says Day, who turned 40 in March, referring to the inherent pressure of his position. “I’m not naïve to what it is, but worrying about any of that stuff doesn’t do you any good. It just doesn’t. If you do a good job right now, today, then tomor
“Worrying about any of that stuff doesn’t do you any good. It just doesn’t. If you do a good job right now, today, then tomorrow will take care of itself. That’s all you can do.” Ryan Day Ohio State head football coach
row will take care of itself. That’s all you can do.
“Some people say, ‘What if you lose? What if you lose to the Team Up North? What if you don’t win the Big Ten championship? What if you don’t?’ My answer is: What if I do?”
There’s recent precedent. Not quite two years ago, Lincoln Riley succeeded Bob Stoops, and all Oklahoma has done since is win two Big 12 titles and make two College Football Playoff appearances. Last fall, Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith talked with Joe Castiglione, his counterpart at Oklahoma, about how Castiglione knew Riley was the right fit. Smith says what Castiglione told him sounded very much like what he’d seen from Day.
“He is so in touch with people, so in touch with athletes, he gets it,” says Smith, who also valued Day’s varied experience. Before arriving at Ohio State, he worked at New Hampshire (his alma mater), Boston College, Florida and Temple and spent two years in the NFL on Kelly’s staffs.
“If you were setting up a succession plan, this is how you’d do it,” says Smith.
When Meyer returned, Day resumed his duties as offensive coordinator, helping mold quarterback Dwayne Haskins into a first-round draft pick. Smith kept watching. By the end of the season, he says, “it became clear to me that Ryan was the right guy.”
Kelly says he knew a long time ago that the kid from his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire, was special. Even before he recruited Day to play quarterback at New Hampshire, Kelly was impressed with an athlete who “was always the guy that was the center.”
“He never panics,” Kelly says. “Other kids, when they see pressure situations, they kind of get a little helter-skelter. He was never like that. He’s always been kind of mature beyond his years.”
Day’s first coaching experience came with Kelly at New Hampshire. He later rejoined Kelly with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers. When he moved on to Ohio State, Kelly wasn’t surprised that Smith and other Buckeyes’ power brokers were as impressed.
“It’s not that he won an interview,” Kelly says. “It’s that his day-to-day work over the two-year span that he was there gave them confidence that he would be able to take on that role. I think the people at Ohio State saw the same things in him that I’ve seen in him since he was 12.”
Those traits were on display during Day’s stint last season as interim coach. Emotions ran high. No one was sure what would unfold. Day says it was the first time he really understood what he and other coaches have long preached.
“It was the ultimate (time) where you didn’t know what the next day was gonna bring,” Day says. “It was, ‘How do we maximize this team?’ … I really just focused on right now, because that is exactly right.”
In that context, Day says that text message from Kelly was especially meaningful.
“It’d be one thing if it was somebody you’d known for a year or two,” he says. “For somebody that was your coach, somebody that you grew up with, somebody that you coached with to say that, you believe it.”
Now, of course, he is responsible for the bigger picture, too. Since his promotion, he’s sought specific advice from Kelly and other mentors like Steve Addazio and Tom O’Brien, as well as “Urban every day.” (Day says Meyer, who remains on staff as an assistant athletics director, has been “a great reference point.”)
“Not a lot of people have walked in these shoes,” he says. “Not to use those people would be foolish.”
Keeping it going at Ohio State is a pretty big task. Expectations are permanently higher than at almost every other program. The four coaches before Meyer were all inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and the Buckeyes were even better under Meyer: 83-9 in seven seasons, with a national championship and three of the last five Big Ten championships.
While Day seems comfortable in his new shoes, he’s also still settling in after a process he says remains largely “a blur.” Day says there hasn’t been much time to reflect or celebrate — not that he’d have done much of that, anyway.
“We’ll celebrate when we go win a couple of championships,” he says. “That will be the celebration — not so much getting the job.”