Ohio State football: Ryan Day looks to etch his name into OSU coaching history books

Ryan Day can do something this Saturday that only one other Ohio State football coach has done before him. If Ryan Day wins this Saturday at Ohio Stadium over the Maryland Terrapins, he will have reached 50 wins faster than all other Buckeye coaches before him except for his predecessor, Urban Meyer, who was able to reach 50 wins in Columbus in just 54 games.

Day will be coaching in his 56th game as head coach, meaning a win on Saturday puts him second in that category behind Meyer. A lot of great coaches have come before Day, but believe it or not, only six have 50 wins or more. Of course, leading that category is Woody Hayes, who sits atop the coaching Mt. Rushmore at Ohio State with a total of 205 victories. However, Hayes didn’t reach win number 50 until his 67th try.

Whenever a head coach does something that the legendary Woody Hayes did not, it needs to be recognized.

If Day wins on Saturday, he will not only have reached fifty wins faster than Hayes, but he will have also accomplished the feat faster than Jim Tressel, John Cooper, Earle Bruce, and John Wilce, who are the other Ohio State coaches not named Woody Hayes or Urban Meyer to have 50 wins or more.

Wilce was the first coach at Ohio State to reach the 50-win mark, doing so in 1921 in his 65th try. Hayes was next, reaching his 50th victory for the scarlet and gray in 1958. Bruce became the third, having done so in just 63 games into his tenure, which made him the fastest Ohio State coach to do so at the time. Bruce was in his sixth season in 1984 when he accomplished the 50-win total and finished with 81 total victories before being fired in controversial fashion.

John Cooper, who is second all-time in wins at Ohio State with 111, took 78 games to reach the 50-win total. His predecessor, Jim Tressel, was able to do it in 63 games, tying Bruce for the fastest at that time.

If Day is able to capture that 50th win on Saturday, it will be a testament to how good Buckeye Nation has had it over the past 12 seasons. Outside of Woody Hayes’ golden years, there has never been a more dominant era of Ohio State football than what we have been experiencing beginning with Urban Meyer and continuing now with Ryan Day.

The argument can be made that the Ohio State football program might have been winning a lot of football games, but they have underachieved due to not winning more national titles, and that is an argument with some legs. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that more times than not, the Buckeyes have been on the winning end of a lot of football games.