Ryan Day: 'The story of this team is yet to be told'

Ryan Day isn’t ready to turn in a final draft of the 2024 Ohio State Buckeyes. After beating Texas in the Cotton Bowl, Ohio State has Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff national championship next Monday.

Metaphors aside, Day credited his team going through adversity and setting themselves up for history. Despite a backbreaking loss to Michigan, Ohio State ripped off three wins in a row to get to the big stage.

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So if Day wants to tell the real story of this team, it’ll have to wait until after the title game.

“The story of this team is yet to be told,” Day said postgame. “And no great accomplishments are ever achieved without going through adversity. That’s just the truth. So we’ve gone through our share of adversity, and that’s life. I’ve told those guys that. So we’re not focused on what’s coming down the road. We’re not focused on what happened in the past, we’re focused on them right now, and being right where we are. And then at the end, you know, we want to be able to tell the story of this team. And that’s really what this team is focused on right now.”

Day echoed those comments Sunday when he was asked about the expanded playoff. Despite two regular season losses, Ohio State got its shot and as the head coach said, the team was allowed to grow through adversity.

“Yeah, very, very grateful. I think everybody in the program is, to be in this situation, for a lot of reasons,” Day said. But I do think the new format has allowed our team to grow and build throughout the season, and as much as losses hurt, they really allow us as coaches and players to take a hard look at the issues and get them addressed, and then it’s about the business of getting them fixed as time goes on.”

Playing more games is certainly a challenge, but it allowed Ohio State to continue to write that proverbial story.

“I think that’s really been the biggest thing that I’ve learned about this format, which I think has been great for our players. I think it’s great for college football,” Day said.

“Along the way, we looked at a lot of different things and metrics about playing this many games, playing our 16th game, what that was going to be like. We knew it was going to be a little bit of a battle of attrition at times. So depth was certainly a critical part of roster management and talent acquisition, but also how we practice, how we play. So we’ve taken all those things into consideration so that we’re still really, really fresh going into the end of the season.”