Ryan Day stresses importance of finding happiness outside results

Throughout his time at Ohio State head coach Ryan Day has both found on-field success and criticism over those on-field results. Now, however, he’s able to step back and let himself enjoy winning his first national championship.

Despite that, as Day explained after winning the national championship, it’s important to find happiness outside of on-field results. So, while there’s a lot to be proud of, that’s not where he’s getting his own personal happiness.

“If you define your happiness by the results, then you can find yourself focusing on those things,” Ryan Day said. “I don’t. I’m just as proud of this team no matter what happened. But now the best thing is, again, you get to hear about these guys for the history of college football, and these guys get to go back to the Woody and put their arm around their wife and their kids and say, look what dad did. To me, that’s all that matters because that’s why you get into coaching. It isn’t to hoist trophies or make big contracts or anything like that. The reason you get into coaching is to help young men reach their dreams and goals, period. At least that’s what I and our staff are in this thing for.”

During his time at Ohio State, Ryan Day has done plenty of winning. That’s to the tune of a 70-10 career record. However, he has also faced plenty of criticism for not winning more. In particular, up until this season’s run, he struggled in big games and still has the four-game losing streak to Michigan.

“When that’s your focus, then you wake up and you realize that as awful as some things can happen during the season, you look at those as opportunities,” Day said. “And now you get to tell an unbelievable story behind it. That’s exactly what life is all about. Just the feeling of seeing our guys and the elation in the locker room, the euphoria, everything about it makes it all worth it. But again, that’s what life is all about. Nothing great was ever achieved without going through adversity along the way. That’s what makes this team special.”

While Ryan Day may not want to rely on on-field results for happiness, it’s hard not to find joy this season. In particular, when he looks at Ohio State’s College Football Playoff run, he’s proud of the accomplishment.

“Not only that, I think it’s easy to say — or not easy to say, I guess, but can be argued that this was the best run in the history of college football. To go play at home against Tennessee who’s a very, very good team, then go to Oregon, the No. 1 team in the country and win that game at the Rose Bowl the way we did, and then beat Texas in Texas, which that was a road game. I don’t care what anybody says, that was a road game, it was a very difficult game,” Day said. “And then play a really good Notre Dame team like this, I think in the history of college football, I don’t think there’s been Top 5 wins like that. All things that we’re very proud of.”

Ohio State finished the 2024-25 season going 14-2 and winning four College Football Playoff games along their way to a national championship.