Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes reached the college football mountaintop in January, winning the storied program’s first national championship in 10 years, and the head coach joined Friday’s edition of “The Herd” to break down how exactly his team accomplished such a feat.
“I think about the NIL (name, image and likeness), the transfer portal, the conference realignment with 18 teams — in the Big Ten we 1741383895 travel to the West Coast — and you have the playoff change (to 12 teams),” Day told Colin Cowherd. “Those are just four things that have all happened. Those are major, major changes, so you just had to be comfortable being uncomfortable. … What matters is talent acquisition on the field and putting a team together.
“As much, though, as things have changed … I felt with this team [that] it was about the kind of timeless principles of hard work and sacrifice and loyalty and resilience that separated us.”
Ohio State HC Ryan Day on winning the National Championship
Ohio State was among the busiest schools in the transfer portal last offseason, bringing in new quarterback Will Howard, starting running back Quinshon Judkins and star defensive back Caleb Downs, among other players.
The Buckeyes began the 2024 season 5-0 before a grueling, one-point loss on the road to Oregon. Then, Ohio State won five consecutive games before a crushing, 13-10 loss at home to archival and then-unranked Michigan.
Ohio State, which was 10-2 at the time (7-2 in Big Ten play), claimed the No. 8 seed in the College Football Playoff and proceeded to destroy No. 9 seed Tennessee in the first round, 42-17, followed by handling top-seeded Oregon in the quarterfinals, 41-21. The Buckeyes then beat No. 5 seed Texas in the semifinals, 28-14, thanks to an 83-yard scoop-and-score from defensive end Jack Sawyer with 2:13 remaining in the fourth quarter.
The Buckeyes put a bow on the season with a 34-23 win over No. 7 seed Notre Dame in the championship game to secure their ninth title in program history.
Furthermore, 15 Ohio State players were invited to the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine, the most for any school this year.
Day had an emotional reaction to the confetti coming down at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where Ohio State lost to eventual-national champion Georgia in the 2022 CFP semifinals on a missed field goal with three seconds remaining.
“It was my father,” Day said about the first person he thought of after winning the national title. “I lost my father on January 20th when I was nine years old. I saw, when the schedule came out, that the national championship game was on the same day … so I just knew that he was with me that day.”
Across Day’s six full seasons as Ohio State’s head coach (Day was acting head coach for three games in 2018), the Buckeyes are a combined 67-10 with two appearances in the College Football Playoff National Championship. Day was originally added to Urban Meyer’s coaching staff as the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017 before being named the full-time head coach for the 2019 season.
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