Ryan Day and Ohio State are a proven entity. There are two CFP championships to show for it since 2014. The Buckeyes are facing a Steve Sarkisian-coached Texas football team on Saturday that doesn't boast the same record of success in big games and doesn't have a title in the CFP era.
Is that the difference-maker over the strategic matchups on the field? No. But it's a data point that cannot be ignored in a coach-driven sport like college football.
Sarkisian is 5-9 against top-10 teams at the helm for the Longhorns. Day has a 16-10 record in such games. When you have the kind of depth both programs have as the two biggest spenders in the sport, leadership plays a role.
CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli sees the coaching success disparity in big games as the difference-maker in Week 2 on the Forty Acres.
"(The Longhorns) are one of the most talented teams in the country, and even if they have lost to Ohio State each of the last two seasons, it's not as if the Buckeyes have blown the doors off them. Plus, this game is in Austin, which certainly plays to Texas' favor. It's just, at this point, in games like this, Ohio State has inspired more trust than Texas has," Fornelli wrote.
Ryan Day has a 3-3 road record vs. top-10 teams, but there's a clear catch
Specifically looking at Day's road record against top-10 teams, Ohio State is 3-3 in such games. That, in theory, should make the Longhorns confident about Week 2.
Maybe it should. The last team to win a matchup of that nature against OSU was Oregon in 2024. Like Texas with Arch Manning, those Ducks had a future NFL draft pick at quarterback, Dillon Gabriel, and a handful of weapons in the passing game who'd also gone on to be drafted.
Still, that one-point loss at Autzen Stadium, where Dan Lanning has lost just twice in his Oregon head coaching career, is an outlier. The other two losses were part of the 2,191 days the Buckeyes couldn't get past TTUN. That was its own curse that has been lifted.
Texas has 1-3 record at home vs. top-10 teams
Sarkisian struggles at home against top-10 teams. The Longhorns lost to Georgia last year and to Alabama and TCU in 2022. Their lone win against a top-10 team was against Texas A&M last November.
Sarkisian recruited the kind of roster in 2026 that could correct those big-game woes.
The offensive line and run game have seemingly improved drastically, making Manning and his much-improved receiving corps an even bigger threat. Defensively, with improved second and third levels, Texas has more to slow down Julian Sayin and prevent him from getting the ball to Jeremiah Smith, Devin McCuin, and the rest of the highly touted receiver room.
You better believe all these data points will be used as part of a larger narrative that Sark can't win the big one if the Buckeyes get past the Horns.
For Day, it wouldn't be nearly as catastrophic a loss, assuming it ends in an at-Oregon-in-October-2024 kind of way. A blowout is a much different story.
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