The Ohio State football team is coming off the longest season in college football history. They had to play 16 games, which is the same number of games as an old NFL season. With that long of a season, Day decided to start Spring practice later than usual. He wanted to give his team some more rest.
Day expects his team to play deep into the season every year. He should be able to make the College Football Playoff pretty much every season now that it's a 12-team Playoff. That means that Day needs to find a way to manage the workload throughout the season with his team.
Last season, Day was very conscious of that effort. He made sure that his guys weren't worn down at the end of the long season. Now that he has experience playing such a long season, how will he manage seasons moving forward with the workload?
How Ryan Day will manage the Ohio State football team's long, upcoming season
The Buckeyes are a team that should be able to manage the long season better than most. They will have enough depth to deal with the long season because of how well they have recruited. Day trusts a lot of people to play significant snaps in big games.
That's something that was key to Ohio State's national championship run last year. They had guys on both offense and defense who were able to give the starters some rest. This is going to be the same kind of depth that the Buckeyes try to establish this season.
Day will also have to dial the physicality of practice down later in the season in order to keep his guys fresh. He is also going to make sure that his team is the best-conditioned team in the country. They need to have guys who won't get tired in the fourth quarter of these games.