In late July at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day was doing his breakout session with a group of huddled reporters. In the corner of one of the large ballrooms at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, one reporter hit Day with a question that seemed out of place timing-wise.
Question: “How do you beat Michigan?”
Day: “Score more points than them.”
You could feel Day was annoyed by the question. Maybe it was the brevity and bluntness with which it was phrased. Perhaps it was that the question was asked at all. Maybe it was the insinuation that no matter how good Ohio State ever becomes, it will always be undermined by losing to Michigan.
It had been eight months since Ohio State’s shocking home loss to Michigan last season, a game in which the Buckeyes were favored by more than 20 points. It had been 6.5 months since Ohio State responded to that loss by going on an unbelievable postseason run that culminated with the Buckeyes hoisting the national championship trophy in Atlanta. And yet there we were, in the middle of the desert, and Day was being asked about Michigan.
That’s what this rivalry means to Ohio State and its supporters. It’s everything.
Has Day’s built-up equity from winning the national championship at Ohio State break the Michigan hex? Or does Day have to actually beat the Wolverines for the first time since 2019 to break away from the lone black mark on an otherwise supremely impressive resume? Saturday. In Ann Arbor.
Another year has flown by, and it’s time again for The Game, the best rivalry in college football. This year, Ohio State enters 11-0 and a 10-point favorite according to BetMGM, its College Football Playoff fate already sealed. Michigan, meanwhile, is on a five-game winning streak and needs to beat the Buckeyes to make it into the CFP. The stakes, as per all the previous iterations of The Game, are off the charts.
This game is bigger for Michigan than Ohio State given what’s at stake this season. But there’s no question that this game is bigger for Day than anyone. A huge part of his reputation, yet again, is on the line. He’s a competitor who is driven by being the best. And as it pertains to Michigan, you simply cannot say he has been. Frankly, Day has failed miserably with Michigan.
Yes, he is an Ohio State national champion — and forever a legend in Buckeye lore as a result, which is his equity — but can the Buckeyes’ head coach, in the modern era of college football, be successful in his job as a whole if he fails in this one (very important) aspect?
The answer to that question is complicated. This is no longer the old days when losing to Michigan also ends your season. It is an interesting thought exercise to picture how things would have gone for John Cooper — the former Ohio State head coach who assembled super teams in the 1990s but couldn’t get over the Michigan hump — had his teams still been able to compete for national titles after losing to the Wolverines.
Though Cooper assembled some of the most loaded rosters the Buckeyes have ever fielded and was the first coach in program history to recruit nationally, he’s forever defined by his failures against Michigan. His record was 2-10-1. It’s burned into everyone’s brain, especially because he didn’t have the benefit of recovering from those losses in an expanded playoff system.
Day had that opportunity last year, and he erased all of the negativity and vitriol from losing to Michigan by beating Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame in the postseason before winning it all. If last year were 1999, Day’s season would have ended when he had to have a security detail protecting his house. Who knows if he’d even still be the head coach?
Which brings us back to the concept of equity and the mindset that may put him in this season.
So much of The Game is mental. Maybe most of it. If you want to push back on that notion, let me remind you that the national champion Buckeyes lost — at home — to a Michigan team that could barely complete a forward pass last season. It was one of the most shocking losses in the rivalry’s history, if not college football. And during that game, the television cameras locked in on Day gazing off into the sky, dumbfounded, much like they captured Cooper doing during broadcasts in the 1990s.
Can Day let go of all of that now that he has a championship ring on his finger? Can he relax? Can he take his superior roster, go up to Ann Arbor and get his team to play loose? Can he let go of having to be tougher than Michigan? Can Ohio State play Ohio State football and air it out to its freakishly talented receivers or is it going to get dragged into a Michigan game on a cold day in Ann Arbor?
Can Day, gulp, have fun?
“Fun is kicking ass,” Day said during his news conference from the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Tuesday. “That is what we want to do on Saturday. We’re preparing to do that and that’s it. The fun part is winning. We’ll save the fun for being in the locker room and celebrating after The Game.”
Last year was traumatic for Day and Ohio State. After Michigan pulled off the upset, the team planted its flag at midfield of Ohio Stadium and a brawl broke loose. Pepper spray was used. It was an absolute chaotic scene, one the Buckeyes won’t forget.
You have to question whether Ohio State is going to be doing a flag-planting in Ann Arbor if it is lucky enough to turn the rivalry back in its favor.
But there is one flag Day can plant: that he is the best coach in college football.
If Ohio State wins this game — and he can finally shake off the Michigan stench that followed him all the way to Las Vegas — what will people say about him then? Ohio State wins the most. It recruits the best. It portals most efficiently. It retains most. It stands above everyone else in college football in the moment, even taller than the Buckeyes did during Urban Meyer‘s tenure. If you take “he can’t beat Michigan” away, what’s left to say about Day at that point?
That is undoubtedly driving him.
But emotion is a funny thing. It’s a powerful thing.
“You have to play with emotion but you can’t let it play with you,” Day said. “You have to use it as nitrous, not as a primary fuel source. … They are going to have enough emotion when they get into the game. We don’t need to [elicit] any more of that during the week. They know how important this is. They know this is our No. 1 goal every year to win this game. That’ll be our focus.
“You start to get overly emotional, you can start getting distracted and getting yourself out of whack and not doing your job. Let’s focus on every individual guy and making sure that at the end of the day, they have graded out a champion.”
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Noon. Saturday.
Is that where a new Ryan Day is born?