Ryan Day Deserves Far More Respect for What He’s Done at Ohio State

After an undefeated regular season, Ohio State took the eventual national champions to the wire, and the following game was another heartbreaking loss to the national runner-up. In those two games, the Buckeyes had every opportunity to win, including horrible missed field goals from Jayden Fielding and terrible red-zone management.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad year for Ohio State, but for a fan base with as high of expectations as they have, it still wouldn’t be seen as a successful year. Head coach Ryan Day has built up a little bit of goodwill with the Buckeye faithful after his national title run in 2024-25, but he’s never truly been respected by the fan base or the national media.

This week alone, Paul Finebaum was on ESPN claiming that Day “can’t quit choking” and isn’t in that upper echelon of coaches. And it’s not just Finebaum; despite all the success Day has had at Ohio State, he is still seen in a tier below Curt Cignetti or Kirby Smart, when he is absolutely in that tier of coach.

Jim Harbaugh ruined Ryan Day’s reputation with his moronic “born on third base” comments. However, when you look back at that situation, it looks quite dumb. First, Harbaugh finished just 3-5 against Ohio State in his career and took that shot at Day after backing out of their 2020 matchup, claiming he wasn’t able to field a team, despite them being fully operational at practice the next day. Now, let’s take a look back at that era of Michigan football and see if anything sticks out.

2017: 8-5
2018: 10-3
2019: 9-4
2020: 2-4
Massive sign-stealing, illegal recruiting, and illegal hacking scandals begin.
2021: 12-2
2022: 13-1
2023: 15-0
Gets caught cheating, and investigations begin
2024: 8-5
2025: 9-4

The team's record alone should raise some red flags, but take a look at how those Michigan players have fared in the NFL as well. Ryan Day’s entire legacy has revolved around his failures against Michigan, even as he should be given grace for one of the largest cheating scandals in sports history… at least since this past week at Michigan.

Day is 83-12, good for the second-best winning percentage in the history of college football; he has a winning record in bowl games and a winning record against top-25, top-10, and top-5 teams. All the dude does is win, and he gets no credit for it because he took over a good Ohio State program.

Great coaches retire all the time, and normally their replacements don’t end up with the second-best win percentage in sports history. Ryan Day is graded on the hardest curve in the history of the sport, when he should be treated as one of the all-time greats.

Ohio State is one again in the spotlight this week against Texas, and no matter what happens, the Buckeyes will be fine under Coach Day. But expect him to get his first of many signature wins in a difficult 2026 campaign.