Kirk Herbstreit gets 100% real about Ryan Day’s rough road
The The Ohio State football team won the national championship less than two months after much of the fan base called for a head coach Ryan Day be fired. When the Buckeyes lost to Michigan earlier in the season as 20-point favorites at home, many fans gave up on Day, but on Monday night in Atlanta, he gave them reason to believe. He may have been winless against Michigan in his last four tries, but Ohio State just won the national title.
As the head coach of the Ohio State football team, you are told from day one that beating Michigan is the top priority. Ryan Day hasn’t been able to do it since 2019, but he just won a national championship. ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit knows which day has passed because of those losses.
“I hear the stories behind the curtain, I know what he, his wife and his family are going through,” Herbstreit said during Monday’s game. “It’s really, it’s hard. It’s tough being a coach at a premium school where you’re expected to win every game. He did it with such class. And he climbed to the top of the mountain.”
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Ohio State fans definitely want that win over Michigan, but winning the national championship definitely softens the blow of that loss. After all, Day has been incredible against every team in his career except Michigan. Now that it is College Football Playoff has expanded to 12, it doesn’t even have to beat the Wolverines to get to the top. This year proved that. Obviously that’s still the main goal of the program, but this year they suffered perhaps the worst loss to Michigan in program history and won it all.
In the previous four-team era, that loss to Michigan would have been it for Ohio State. They would be done, and who knows what the narrative would be about Dan. Instead, the Buckeyes got another shot after an underwhelming two-game losing streak in the regular season, and ended up winning the national championship despite finishing fourth in the Big Ten. Buckeye fans definitely feel better for Day.
2025-01-21 05:46:00
