Ryan Day addresses continuity of Ohio State staff, potential departures

After a grueling 2024 campaign, the Ohio State Buckeyes are officially national champions. However, defending your title is even more difficult than getting it in the first place.

Programs around the country will want a slice of Ohio State’s success and be willing to poach players and coaches who can help them achieve similar results. The day after Ohio State won the National Championship, OSU head coach Ryan Day discussed the challenge of keeping his staff together.

“I just think there should be great opportunity for all these guys,” Day said. “We’ll work hard to make sure that they have an opportunity here at Ohio State, but if they have opportunities to go other places and do other things, then that’s part of the reward of winning a championship.

“We’ll put this next group of guys together and figure it out because these guys deserve opportunity for what they’ve done. This coaching staff has done an unbelievable job. There’s a lot of guys in different positions, and whether it’s promotions or whatever it might be, they deserve those things.”

Thus far, Ryan Day has done an excellent job of retaining his staff. However, the Buckeyes did suffer one significant blow this past week when defensive coordinator Jim Knowles accepted an offer to serve in the same role at Penn State.

As Day promised, Ohio State reportedly attempted to get Knowles to reconsider by offering him a promotion. However, the 59-year-old coach couldn’t be dissuaded and will be manning the Nittany Lions’ sideline next fall.

It’s a painful blow for the Buckeyes, who — under Knowles’ leadership — had the best defense in the country this past season, giving up just 254.6 yards per game. While Knowles hadn’t made his decision at the time of Ryan Day’s comments, the Buckeyes’ head coach seems to have an understanding view of his assistants’ decisions.

“As you go through all these different guys, the No. 1 thing to me was loyalty throughout the season. These guys were loyal,” Day said. “And there’s a lot of guys now on our staff that have analyst roles, GA roles, but they all stuck together.

“After you win something like this there’s opportunity and we’re going to fight like heck to keep these guys the best we can, but when opportunity knocks and they have opportunities they deserve to do that for their families if that is what’s best for their families.

“There’s no better place than Ohio State, so there will be a lot of reason for them to stay, but we’ll figure that out as we move forward.”