Despite a 45–6 record in four seasons as Ohio State coach after taking over for Urban Meyer, Ryan Day faces significant criticism from a loud segment of the Buckeyes fanbase. The biggest reason: two of those six losses have come at the hands of Michigan, Ohio State’s primary rival and a team that was winless against the Buckeyes under Meyer. The Wolverines broke the streak, which dated back to 2011, with a 42–27 win in ’21, and followed it up with a 45–23 win last season.
Day, who has reached the College Football Playoff three times in four years after being promoted from offensive coordinator, is still searching for his first national title with the program, but the team has been in contention for virtually his entire tenure. On Tuesday, two prominent members of the Ohio State community threw their support behind Day: former Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel and former quarterback-turned-ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit.
Speaking to the The Blade at an event in northwest Ohio, Tressel said that “Ryan has done a great job,” while Herbstreit got far more colorful, calling out what he calls the “lunatic fringe,” an estimated 15% of Ohio State fans that he says “get mad at anything.”
“That percent is going to be mad at something always. [Day] could win the Michigan game, go to the playoff and lose, and they’ll be mad about that,” Herbstreit told The Blade. “That group is just a bunch of jackasses who kind of embarrass all of us as Ohio State fans. So I don’t really care, honestly, what that group thinks. But the people who matter, the logical people who actually have a brain and understand the sport, they love what Ryan Day has done. The fact that this is even a topic is almost comical.”
While a certain percentage of the Buckeye faithful may want Day gone, that group does not yet feature the main person who would make that call: athletic director Gene Smith, who downplayed criticism of the coach during an April interview with ESPN.
“My standards are high; our team standards are high,” Smith said of Day and the program. “So we talk about how do we get better and how do we make sure we are able to win the championships that we aspire to win? We look at each individual contest that got in the way of that, and we’re trying to figure out what’s the strategy to mitigate that. When we lose, it’s highly disappointing, but I break things down and look at things objectively, and we have good conversations about what we need to do better.”
