Why Ohio State's Ryan Day faces the most pressure of any head coach in the College Football Playoff Semifinals

After a wacky and wildly entertaining season, we conclude the 2022 calendar with a couple of College Football Playoff Semifinals on New Year’s Eve. 

No. 1 Georgia is looking to become just the second repeat champion in 27 years, squaring off against a salty Ohio State Buckeyes team hoping to exact a bit of revenge after losing their finale to their archival.

Meanwhile, No. 2 Michigan returns to the CFP for the second-straight season, looking to end No. 3 TCU’s storybook season en route to its first national title since 1997. 

There are no shortage of storylines, individual matchups and interesting Xs and Os keys to each semifinal, but there’s a single, looming narrative question surrounding one particular head coach. 

Can Ryan Day and the Buckeyes avoid an existential crisis offseason?

Kirby Smart is the reigning national champion head coach. Jim Harbaugh tried to leave Ann Arbor for Minneapolis 10 months ago, yet it’s Ryan Day who faces the most pressure in either semifinal Saturday.

Why is that?

Ryan Day hasn’t quite reached the Dark Knight “hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now” territory in Columbus, but it’s close. I can think of no modern-day head coach in a more precarious position despite such immense success.

Over the course of the next week, the pendulum on how OSU fans view Ryan Day could swing vastly in different directions. 

Villain. Hero. Or, gulp, pariah. 

“The expectations at Ohio State and Georgia are the highest level,” Day said. “We embrace that. Our players embrace that. That’s why you come to Ohio Stat. To be in situations like this and play in games like this and go compete for a national championship.”

The championship OSU and UGA are battling for is the same, but the pressure is certainly not equal. 

Day is 45-5 at OSU, with a couple of Big Ten titles and CFP berths. He’s affable and well-liked. He’s an offensive savant and a solid recruiter. 

Yet two straight lopsided losses to Michigan — the school up North that the Buckeyes treated like their scrawny little brother for close to 20 years — has led to John Cooper comparisons and some Buckeyes fans pinning for the return of Urban Meyer. 

Harbaugh famously made the “Sometimes the people standing on third base think they hit a triple. But they didn’t,” quip about Day just last season, but now some OSU fans are making similar conclusions after the Buckeyes were once again out-coached and out-muscled by their biggest rival. 

Again, Day has lost FIVE games at Ohio State, but there’s a faction of OSU’s fan base that believes he’s not the right guy for the job. That he did inherit a program on third base but can’t hit the home run.

It’s not fair, but the sentiment is real. 

Let’s recap a bizarre last month in Columbus. Day spent 365 days talking up the Michigan game only for Ohio State to fold in the fourth quarter again. Then OSU’s recruiting class, which finished No. 5 nationally, stumbled late, suffering several flips and a couple of marquee whiffs down the stretch. That Day wished for the old days when “there was a time other schools stopped recruiting players after they committed” was another poor look.

To cap a rough month, the nation’s No. 1 prospect in the 2024 class Dylan Raiola also decommited from OSU. 

So Buckeye fans are on tilt. 

That’s what makes the broader outcome in Saturday’s game for OSU so fascinating. For Georgia, the stakes are clear. Win, and Kirby Smart is a victory away from cementing the Bulldogs’ program as the new preeminent powerhouse in college football. 

For Day, the stakes are much dicier. 

If OSU gets blown out against UGA? Woof. Welcome to the most uncomfortable offseason at Ohio State in a decade. 

A close, competitive loss to the Bulldogs should prove that the Buckeyes are just fine — supremely talented, well-coached and in no need of an identity change. 

But that’s not what Buckeye fans want to hear. 

Day will only calm the waters in Columbus if he leads Ohio State to an upset over Georgia — and even then the goodwill could be short-lived. 

Because if Ohio State were to make it to the national title in a rematch against Michigan — and then lose to the Wolverines for the third time in two seasons — we’re talking “watching the world burn” stuff in Columbus. 

The program’s soul will have been stolen, and the one guy who will get all the blame is Ryan Day. 

Kirby Smart, Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney all deal with insane expectations, too, but there’s a particular uniqueness to Day’s situation. As the current head coach of the Buckeyes, there’s no ceiling or floor for OSU’s program. They’re essentially one-in-the-same. Lose to Michigan or fail to win the national title, and Buckeye fans view the season as a disaster. That’s the bar they’ve set. That’s the pressure Day faces Saturday night. 

He isn’t in danger of getting fired, but he could be a week away from being crowned the hero in Columbus who delivered another national title. Or a week away from becoming the ultimate pariah if he loses to Michigan again. Or a day away from facing questions all offseason about how Ohio State’s program is perceived to be going backward if he loses Saturday.

I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a head coach sit on such a knife’s edge.