Ryan Day stresses sacrifice for Ohio State to be successful

Ohio State as seen plenty of success since Ryan Day took over the program. But he uses one word to describe what it takes to be such a great team: sacrifice.

Day discussed the importance of sacrifice during a Zoom call with reporters on Thursday, saying that’s an important part of taking a good program and making it great. It can be as simple as giving up video games to as difficult as giving up sleep.

But either way, it helps as the players and coaches work toward the ultimate goal of winning a championship.

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“If we want to go reach our goals, what’s going to make us different than everybody else in the country?” Day said. “We have to be able to sacrifice things. A lot of times that’s time. That’s doing things that, maybe, normal people do. We can’t do that. You have to sacrifice a lot of things, you know? Sometimes for coaches, you’ve got to sacrifice sleep early in the week. That’s how it goes.

“You’ve got to try to out-work people. You’ve got to spend time. I think that’s important. It’s for everybody, and it’s not just one thing across the board. Everybody kind of understands, what do they need to sacrifice? Maybe it’s video games. I don’t know what it might be, but I know for a fact if we want to reach our goals, then we have to be different than everybody else.”

Ryan Day feels better about Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s status

The status of Ohio State wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba is and will remain a major point of interest in the orbit of Buckeye football until the star makes his return. When exactly that will be remains to be seen, as head coach Ryan Day has been coy about the junior.

Since he hurt his leg against Notre Dame in the opener, Smith-Njigba has missed all but one game for Ohio State. It has been posited that Saturday’s game against Iowa, coming after an off week, could be a good time to slot him back into the lineup. Day has been tight-lipped about that, but was asked if he could at least give an answer on whether or not he’s felt Smith-Njigba is making progress toward being available.

“I can answer that,” he said, “and the answer is yes.”