Beyond the Box Score: There shouldn’t be any pressure on Ryan Day entering this season

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You would think that because he led the Buckeyes to the national championship in 2024, Ryan Day would have years of job security ahead of him. Unfortunately, college football, like any sport, is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately league.

That’s especially true at Ohio State.

All Ryan Day has done, for the most part, is win. Five College Football Playoff berths in seven years. New Year’s Six bowls in the two years the Buckeyes didn’t make the Playoff. Oh, and a national championship in 2024. Not to mention a pair of Big Ten Championships.

Coming off the disappointing end to the 2025 season, where the Buckeyes were ousted in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, less than four weeks after losing to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship, there is pressure on Ryan Day to get the Buckeyes back to the top of the College Football world.

But how much pressure should there be? Not any more than there already is as the head coach at Ohio State. He’s led the Buckeyes to the national championship before, and that gives him vindication.

Day has an .872 winning percentage in seven seasons as the Buckeyes’ head coach. I don’t care what school he’s the head coach for, winning 87 percent of your games in your first seven seasons as head coach is pretty darn impressive. Especially at a school like Ohio State, where literally every game is highly scrutinized.

Heck, every play of every game is dissected. That’s pressure in and of itself.

Think about this, too. The Buckeyes’ postseason last year was marked by offensive coordinator Brian Hartline taking the head coaching job at USF. Clearly, that was a distraction. Even if Day tried to downplay it, it was a distraction.

Julian Sayin looked indecisive in the Big Ten Championship and College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes scored just 24 combined points in those two games, with an offense that looked out of sync.

Before the Big Ten Championship, the Buckeyes had won 16 straight games. In that stretch, the Buckeyes beat Tennessee, Oregon, Texas twice, Notre Dame, and Michigan. The win in Ann Arbor last year was business-like. It felt like there was no stopping Ryan Day and the Buckeyes after that game.

The whole perception about Day felt like it had changed.

With all the chaos in college football, Day is the steadying force. Look at all the teams that have new head coaches this season.

Penn State and Michigan are two notable programs in the Big Ten alone. LSU has a new head coach. Those programs are all in transition to various degrees.

Not the Buckeyes. Ryan Day is locked and loaded, and so too are the Buckeyes, going into the 2026 season.

Even with last year’s disappointment, Day is still among the best head coaches in all of college football. Winning a national championship changes the perception of a head coach. It was that way with head coaches like Kirby Smart, Jim Harbaugh, Dabo Swinney, and now, Ryan Day.

To think there should be a lot of pressure on him going into this season isn’t fair. Yes, there is automatic pressure applied when you’re the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. But any more pressure on Day is unfair.

He led Ohio State to a national championship in this new era of college football. A steadying force during a time that could have broken the program. Day delivers, and he is poised to do so again in 2026.

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