Greg McElroy: Ryan Day is ‘one of my favorite people’ in college football

Ohio State fans weren’t the only ones happy to see Ryan Day finally bring a national championship back to Columbus. Last week, ESPN’s Greg McElroy opened up on his admiration for the Buckeyes’ head coach.

“I’ll be the first one to admit, we don’t — in this profession — often root for teams. We root for stories. We root for people,” McElroy said. “To be honest with you, Ryan Day has been one of my favorite people in the sport since I met him for the first time when he was filling in an interim role for Urban Meyer.

“He was the head coach there for a three-game sequence, and we actually were on the call for his first-ever game as a head coache against Oregon State. It was a tremendous offensive performance. The defensive performance left a little to be desired, but the takeaway that I had that afternoon watching them win that game, was this guy is going to do some special things here in college football.”

Day has done just that. Over the course of six seasons as Ohio State’s full-time head coach, Day has led the Buckeyes to a 70-10 record and 46-5 mark in conference play. Under Day, Ohio State has won the Big Ten Championship twice, reached the College Football Playoff four times and, of course, won the national title this past season.

Despite Day’s overwhelming success, there were questions surrounding his coaching ability heading into this season. The outside noise only grew louder after Ohio State lost to Oregon early in the season and subsequently fell at Michigan in the regular-season finale.

Nonetheless, Ryan Day didn’t crack under the pressure. Greg McElroy expected nothing less from the coach.

“I didn’t, at that point, anticipate Urban Meyer not being at Ohio State in the near future, but I knew that wherever Ryan Day ended up, he would find success,” McElroy said. “He has, at a place that has tremendous resources and tremendous pressure. The pressure that he felt to deliver this year was immense.

“They had the best roster. They had a senior-laden group that had circled this opportunity. A lot of guys came back, including eight on the defensive side that were all seniors trying to become the first national champion in Columbus in a 10-year span.

“They were able to capture that. But it was not easy. After the Michigan game, it would have been easy for these guys to start to turn on one another, start to point fingers, start to make excuses. What did they do? They took accountability, they took ownership, and they said it will not happen again. That deserves to be commended.”