By winning a national championship with a win over Notre Dame on Monday night, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day finished an epic like no other. He also got revenge like you have never seen before. No, I’m not talking about that silly, talked-about-too-much feud with Lou Holtz. I’m talking about every last one of Day’s detractors, naysayers, and doubters.
He’s changed things forever at Ohio State, and there’s no going back. Ryan Day has said his three goals for Ohio State are to beat that team up north, win the Big Ten, and play for a national championship and in that order. Now that he’s won a national championship without doing what used to be the first two steps, the order has changed. Now, it’s to play for a national championship and hopefully win your conference and beat your rival on the way.
It used to be that that was the order because it had to be. You couldn’t get to the third goal without accomplishing the first two goals. Ryan Day has just shown that doing it that way is no longer a necessity. And now that it’s not a necessity, those first two goals don’t matter as much. It’s difficult to fathom, but this will become clearer with each passing college football season all across the nation.
With this win, though, Ryan Day changed Ohio State’s culture. He shattered the foundation of the belief that at Ohio State, you can only be great if you win The Game and beat that team up north. To those of us in Ohio who said Day couldn’t get it done, and that it was time to move on (and I was one of them, by the way!)
He showed the team up north how they don’t matter anymore. They won in an upset win that was his worst game as a coach and was the biggest upset in that rivalry in 55 years, and he just made it meaningless. Winning a national title cleanly can do things like that! It has been said that the only thing worse than having someone hate you is to have them be indifferent to you. Coach Day is indifferent to the whole state of Michigan.
Then there’s those of us among Buckeye Nation who wanted him gone after that 13-10 loss. The ones that have been called the lunatic fringe. Day has made plenty of crow for all of us to chow down on. Ryan Day is a great coach who’s earned every bit of the cosmic vindication his 2024 National Champion Ohio State Buckeyes just got him.
I was a doubter. I didn’t believe and wouldn’t believe until he did what he did today. I was wrong. So tremendously, gloriously, happily wrong. Now, I’m a believer. No one could be happier for Coach Day than us the lunatic fringe critics. This crow is delicious. My compliments to the chef.