And should Ryan Day really be on the hot seat? Six reasons why moving on from Ryan Day would be a major mistake.
The 2024 season is National Title or bust for Ohio State football and Ryan Day! This 2024 season storyline is probably the biggest across all college football but it’s most certainly the biggest storyline in the Big Ten this year. It seems like you can read or hear about these stories wherever college football is covered.
But how true are these topics? Is Ryan Day really on a serious hot seat and could potentially lose his job depending on how this year plays out? Or has it even gone as far to say Ohio State needs to win the National Title this year for Day to retain his head coaching job?
Big Jeff wants to dive deep into this topic and let us bring in some statistics to help in providing context. But before we do that, let me give you my take on the situation.
The idea that it is National Title or bust for Ohio State football is ridiculous and is nonsense. The Ohio State administration would look like complete idiots if they did this.
Then why does it feel like every media outlet want to publicize this headline? Because it draws tremendous ratings and readership since Ohio State may be the most followed and hated football program in the nation all at the same time.
I should know – I live in Atlanta and am an Ohio State fan. If you want to get a reaction from people out in public, simply put on an Ohio State t-shirt or hat and go walk around Atlanta and you will get comments from both fellow fans and haters. The Buckeyes are a lightning rod.
The reasons are for another story but the only school who drew in more average TV viewers per game than Ohio State in 2023 was Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide.
College Football TV Ratings in 2023: The SEC Was #1 – Who do you think was #2?
The Buckeyes have a huge alumni base, ultra-passionate fans, and get prime TV slots for most of their games. Fans love to hate them so the thought of “National Title or bust for Ohio State” is very compelling. But it is not true. Here are 6 big reasons why.
Reason 1: Based on his record, Ryan Day is a very good, if not great, college football coach.
Quiz time. Of all active Division 1 football coaches, who has the best current winning percentage? Georgia’s Kirby Smart right? Wrong, it’s Ryan Day at #1 with a 56-8 record for a .875-win percent, followed by Kirby Smart at #2 with a 94-16 record or .855-win percent. For more reference, recently retired Alabama coach Nick Saban had a .806-win rate (297-71-1).
Current College Football Coaches Winning Percentage Rankings
In fact, if you looked at the all-time Division 1 coaching win percentage (for those with minimum 10 years coaching), the only one who is better than Ryan Day’s .875-win rate is some guy who coached at Notre Dame named Knute Rockne at .881 (105-12-5). Urban Meyer is third all-time in Division 1 win rate at .854 (187-32). Though Day has not yet coached ten full years, the point is his win % right now ranks among the all-time greatest college coaches.
All Time College Football Coaches Winning Percentages at Sports-Reference.com
Day has never lost to a Big Ten team other than Michigan (40-3 Big Ten record) and his 8 losses have been to teams ranked at the time #3, #1, #12, #6, #3, #1, #3, and #9. So that is every single loss except one to Top 10 teams.
Ryan Day’s Record by Year and Losses
- 2018 (3-0) – No losses
- 2019 (13-1) – National Playoff Semi-final vs #3 Clemson 29-23
- 2020 (7-1) – National Championship game vs #1 Alabama 52-24
- 2021 (11-2) – #12 Oregon 35-28; #6 Michigan 42-27
- 2022 (11-2) – #3 Michigan 45-23; National Playoff Semi-final vs #1 Georgia 42-41
- 2023 (11-2) – #3 Michigan 30-24; #9 Missouri 14-3
Reason 2: Michigan has had their best 2-year stretch in over half a century.
Why Michigan Football in 2024 Won’t Fall off a Cliff
The big problem for Ryan Day frankly is he has committed the cardinal sin of losing to Michigan three straight years. This is magnified by how his two predecessors dominated Michigan with Urban Meyer going 7-0 (2012 to 2018) and Jim Tressel going 9-1 (2001 to 2010) vs Team Up North.
Ohio State fans were “living the dream” during that stretch of sixteen wins over 18 seasons that included two National Titles and saw them put the Wolverines back in their place after they had dominated over the John Cooper years going 12-2-1 over the Buckeyes in that stretch from 1988 to 2000.
Ohio State fans would do anything to have that feeling back, which is why some feel Day should be fired based on the losses to Michigan alone. The Wolverines first pulled an upset in Ann Arbor over the Buckeyes in 2021, but that team was not quite ready to truly challenge for a National Title and got soundly beat by Georgia in the National Semi-final.
They pulled another upset in Columbus in 2022 over CJ Stroud and company and that Michigan team was much better in my view going 13-0 before getting upset by TCU in the CFP playoff semi-final.
Then in 2023, they had many key players decide to come back for a final year to do something special which they did in beating OSU again at home in a 30-24 game that went down to the final drive and then beating Washington to win their first National Championship since 1997.
So, the 3 losses for Day vs. Michigan include the last 2 years against historically great Michigan teams as proven by their National Championship in 2023 and 28-1 record, and yet OSU was just one drive and possibly one key play away from winning on the road at Michigan in 2023 and entirely changing the narrative on Ryan Day.
Reason 3: Ryan Day and Ohio State was one play away from a National Title in 2022.
You know what another narrative changer would have been? If Marvin Harrison, Jr. would have not gotten knocked out of the 2022 National Semi-final game vs. Georgia on a play in the end zone with Ohio State leading 35-24 with under a minute left in the third quarter. Up to that point Harrison had 5 catches for 106 yards and 2 TDs and the Bulldogs had little answers to stop him and CJ Stroud.
It was a huge play as well since at first it was called targeting but then was reversed on review. The Buckeyes settled for a field goal to go up by 14 points but if that play is called targeting, they are likely to score a touchdown to go up by 18 and in essence put the game away. Also, many feel if Harrison were not knocked out and stayed in the game the Bulldogs would not have been able to complete their comeback.
That was not the only single play that would have brought Ohio State a victory vs Georgia. There were several others but of course the biggest was the 50-yard FG miss at the end to win the game. Indoors on turf, no wind – very makeable.
To win a National Title you have to be really good and often a little lucky and that night Georgia was lucky, and Ohio State was not. If OSU wins that game, they surely easily beat TCU as well in the National Title game who got dominated by Georgia 65-7.
With a National Title in hand, of course Ryan Day would be viewed entirely differently. And the reality is he was oh so close to having that title. But football and sports can be cruel that way.
Reason 4: Elite Recruiting is key to winning National Titles and is the lifeblood of a program and Ryan Day is an excellent recruiter.
Anyone who covers college football closely knows, without elite recruiting it is almost impossible to win a National Title. In general, top ten recruiting classes are what is needed but top 5 classes like Georgia and Alabama have consistently had magnify your chances to win a title that much more.
When Urban Meyer took over the Ohio State program in 2022, he brought a whole new, SEC-like aggressive recruiting style to the Big Ten with consistent, mostly top five classes during his seven-year tenure. Day’s tenure at Ohio State has not seen a falloff, with five straight Top 5 rated classes (see table below). Plus, Day has had the #1 rated Big Ten class each year in his tenure.
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | |
| National | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 21 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 9 |
| Big Ten | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Coach | Day | Day | Day | Day | Day | Meyer | Meyer | Meyer | Meyer | Meyer |
Source: Rivals.com; 2025 All Teams Football Recruiting Team Rankings (rivals.com)
In some ways, I think Day has even elevated Ohio State recruiting since for the most critical position on the field to impact winning, he has brought in and developed mostly elite and NFL-ready quarterbacks like Dwayne Haskins (2018), Justine Fields (2019-20), and CJ Stroud (2021-22).
Furthermore, Day has Ohio State with the current #1 class in the 2025 recruiting cycle (according to rivals.com) and have the #1 QB and #1 ranked 2025 player in the nation committed in Ohio high school QB Tavian St. Clair.
This elite recruiting that could get even better due to Ohio State’s heightened emphasis on NIL funding means the concept that Ohio Sate needs to win this year (“Natty or bust”) or some sort of window has passed is total nonsense. If OSU doesn’t win it this year, they still will be in great shape to challenge every year going forward under Ryan Day.
Reason 5: Getting rid of Ryan Day assumes he cannot learn and get better as a coach to win a National Championship.
Clearly Ryan Day is a good football coach. I have laid out the reasons why here. But he also only has completed his 5th year as a head coach. He did not have a head job prior to Ohio State so he is really learning on the job and under the most intense pressure any coach could have to learn on the job.
And yet his first five years as head coach he has been right on the doorstep of great things. Yet Day has made his mistakes for sure. By far the worst was the hiring of Kerry Coombs as his defensive coordinator in 2020 to replace Jeff Hafley who left to take over the coaching job at Boston College.
While Coombs was a great recruiter, he was way over his head as a defensive coordinator and Ohio State in 2020 had one of its worst defenses in years, but it was somewhat masked by the 2020 Covid year.
In 2021, it became apparent in the early season home loss to Oregon that Day had made a critical mistake with this hire. In 2022, Day righted the ship and hired Jim Knowles from Oklahoma State showing he can learn and adapt but that decision did set the defense back for close to 3 full years. But now the defense is back to elite status and might end up even being the best in the nation in 2024.
If OSU does not win a National Championship this year means you think he cannot continue to learn and evolve and get better. And someone else will get the benefit of all he has learned.
Reason 6: History is full of excellent coaches who took a while to break through. Letting go of a good coach can haunt a program for many years.
It is ironic that if you used the same criteria for Jim Harbaugh as some are using for Ryan Day that the Michigan national title in the 2023 season would have never happened.
From his hiring in 2015 through the 2020 season, Harbaugh was a solid but unspectacular 49-22 overall and 34-16 in the Big Ten and was 0-5 against Ohio State and Urban Meyer. That would have been 0-6 if not for Michigan deciding not to play Ohio State in the 2020 Covid year. He had not won a Big Ten championship, not made the playoffs and was 1-4 in bowl games.
Using the same evaluation criteria applied to Ryan Day, Harbaugh was simply not that great of a coach and should have been fired. But fortunately for Michigan, they clearly saw he had done good things and retained Harbaugh, who knew he had to adjust to beat Ohio State and break through and that is exactly what he did.
Tom Osborne of Nebraska is considered one of the greatest coaches of all time and has 3 national titles over his 25 years (1973 to 1997) and going 255-49-3 (.836-win rate). But for years he was always the coach that was very good but not good enough to win a title.
Over his first 15 years with the Huskers, he finished in the Top 10 final AP rankings twelve out of 15 years. But a title eluded him including a gut wrenching 31-30 defeat in the 1983 season Orange Bowl vs Miami (FL).
Nebraska stuck with him knowing he was close and were rewarded when Nebraska finally broke through in 1994 beating Miami 24-17 in the Orange Bowl once again and he closed his career with titles in 3 of his last 4 years.
There are other examples I could give but getting rid of a very good coach who is close can set back a program for years. Ask proud programs like Nebraska, Tennessee, Miami, Florida, USC and even Michigan what it is like to have many years of mediocrity and that is what Ohio State risks if they get rid of Day.
Not many people remember the Early Bruce 1980’s years when Ohio State seemed like they finished 9-3 every season. It’s not a bad record for most schools but not Ohio State. If OSU moves on from Day and does not replace him with the right hire, they could experience a drop-off instead of elevating the program.
I made my position clear on if it’s National Title or bust for Ohio State and if Ryan Day is currently on the hot seat.
But what would need to happen for Ryan Day to truly be on the hot seat?
If Ohio State does not win the National Championship but beats Michigan in Columbus on November 30, then Ryan Day is very safe and definitively NOT on the hot seat. I believe beating Michigan is more important to Ohio State fans than losing to them and winning a title.
Now if Ohio State not only doesn’t win a national title but loses to Michigan for a 4th time in a row at home with a team with superior talent, then Day would be on the hot seat and how it plays out depends on how the loss happened and what Ohio State does assuming they make the playoffs.
A 10-2 record should allow them to make the playoffs. If OSU loses to Michigan, they probably will need to make the playoff semi-finals to safely retain his job for another year. Losing to Michigan and still winning a the Natty keeps Day safe as well.
Unless the wheels really fall off, given the level or recruiting Day and his staff are doing and with the #1 QB coming in next year, I still feel it would be crazy for Ohio State not to retain Ryan Day.
