"Well, it's an honor:" What Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said during champions press conference

ATLANTA — Ohio State won a National Championship on Monday night. On Tuesday morning, head coach Ryan Day along with quarterback Will Howard and linebacker Cody Simon spoke with the media for a champions press conference.

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Everything Day said about the win and the Buckeyes can be found below.

Day on what he feels like the story of this team should be…

“I’ll just add that I think that our team can serve as a story for others. What makes Ohio State great is its fan base, and for all those fans that are out there that are going through difficult times in their lives, to hang in there and fight the way that our players did this season, I hope it serves as an inspiration because that’s exactly what happened here, and there was a point in the season where a lot of people counted us out, but we kept fighting and overcame those odds because that’s what life is about.

There were life lessons learned here, and I hope maybe there’s just a couple people out there that are going through a difficult time that keep fighting and keep swinging and they’ll get the thing turned.”

 On what under-the-radar stories that he would like to be told…

“Well, I think if you just pick one, you’ll be taking away from somebody else. That’s why — Donovan Jackson, I could talk about him for 45 minutes. What he did this past year and the unselfishness and the play — he went from guard to tackle and became one of the best tackles in the country. He was going to the NFL, and then at the last second decided he wanted to come back and play.

Lathan Ransom, I could talk forever about Lathan Ransom, the fact that the last time he was at the Rose Bowl was when he broke his leg, and to have the courage to go play the way he did in that Rose Bowl at Oregon and the inspiration he’s had, these guys will tell you, you talk about a guy who just was, like, obsessed with winning this season, Lathan Ransom.

You can just keep going through — like Ty Hamilton. You talk about one of the most unselfish, unsung heroes on this team, all he does is work. He comes in and works every single day. That’s Ty Hamilton.

All these stories need to be told now. They need to be heard. There’s so many of them, and hopefully over the next few months we can continue to talk about these stories, about these guys. A guy like Tyliek Williams, probably one of the more dominant players in college football this season, and where he came when he first got to Ohio State, it was during the COVID run.

We were on the bus driving over to the spring game and he was sitting next to me. He said, I can’t wait to get over to the stadium. He goes, man, I can’t wait to see it. He goes, I’ve never seen the stadium before. He said, during the recruiting process he never even visited the school.

There’s a good portion of the guys on our team in that year, that recruiting class, that actually didn’t visit Ohio State until they come here to check into the dorms.

Again, we can go on for a while. That’s not for right now. But I’m just glad their stories will be heard and Buckeye fans will be able to enjoy those stories for a long time to come.”

On joining Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer as the Ohio State coaches who have won national titles…

“Well, it’s an honor. It’s an honor to be the head coach at Ohio State. I’d probably say that this job is not for everybody, and every year I’ve learned more about myself than I thought going into the season. A big part of it is these players, and I shared that with the guys this season.

I felt like we were knocking on the door several times leading up to this game. You think about the ’19 team, you think about the ’20 team. Every year I felt like we were close, but we just couldn’t get through. This team was different. This team was special. The message was to leave no doubt. Don’t leave it to one play, don’t leave it to one call and don’t leave it in the hands of somebody else. Don’t do that.

I felt like the throw-and-catch there to Jeremiah at the end was like, okay, we’re leaving no doubt with this thing.

To answer your question about the other part of it, I don’t know. I just know that Ohio State is a special place. It’s an honor to be here, an honor to be around some of those names that you just said, because when you hear some of those names like that, they’re some of the best coaches in the history of the game.

But the only way you do that is with great players and great people, and obviously this is a great place.”

On next year’s team and maybe not feeling the immense pressure that you have this year…

“Yeah, try losing the first game and see how that goes at Ohio State. We’ll see about that.

I think we have a great group coming back, but I think what these guys have had an opportunity to do — we had 145 guys on the team, and a percentage of those guys were newcomers, freshmen, and also some of the transfers that are coming in.

The thing I told them is you have to use this time as an opportunity to learn what it’s supposed to look like, and these guys set an amazing example and I asked the captains in particular what do you think about bringing these guys on to the team because they can be a distraction a little bit.

I mean, this is a team that’s been together, all of a sudden you add 25, 30 new guys to the team it can be a little bit of a distraction. They said, no, we want these guys around because we want to hand the torch to them so they understand what the brotherhood is like, they understand what this is supposed to look like so when we leave they can take over for that.

We do have a talented group coming back so we’ll get back and try to figure that out. I don’t know if spring practice is going to look like it usually does. I don’t know if it can for the amount of games these guys have played. But for the young guys we’ve got to get them going, get them indoctrinated into the program and then we’ll ramp up soon.”