Despite all the criticism of his tenure at Ohio State, Ryan Day left Monday’s 34-23 national championship game win over Notre Dame as part of a special club with Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer. Given, which were only as Buckeyes. Title winning head coach.
That’s not bad company, considering Brown is a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Both Tressel and Hayes have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, and Meyer will surely join them at some point.
And Day now joins Lou Holtz in the fraternity of national championship-winning coaches.
Day’s championship, coming at the expense of a Notre Dame program that last won the major under Holtz in 1988, seems especially fitting. One of Dayton’s more memorable moments with the Buckeyes before Monday came in September 2023, when following a 17–14 victory over Ohio State, Day called Holtz In an interview after the game.
Holtz made comments in the lead-up to Ohio State’s visit to Notre Dame Stadium, dismissing the Buckeyes’ ability to handle the physicality of teams with comparable talent levels. When Ohio State won by a goal-line touchdown, Day took offense at the criticism and fired back – an understandable reaction.
But Holtz’s criticism was not unfounded at the time – nor would it have been any less valid just two months after Ohio State closed the regular season with a 13–10 loss to Michigan.
Similarly, the opening drive of the National Championship Game was playing out like a familiar script. Notre Dame’s opening possession wasted nearly the first 10 minutes of the game, including two successful fourth-down conversions and culminating with Riley Leonard punching in a goal-line touchdown.
Eighteen plays. Seventy-five yards. Notre Dame’s offensive line pushed Ohio State’s defense away like no opponent had before in this playoff. That first drive could validate every criticism of Day’s Ohio State teams, as they backed out of the fight when things got physical — if the Buckeyes didn’t return fire and then some.
The Fighting Irish may have kept the championship contest from turning into a laughingstock after Ohio State led 28-7 early in the second half. Leonard gave an inspired effort with his best passing performance of the season and a team-high 40 rushing yards.
However, after the opening drive, Notre Dame never went on offense again. The Buckeyes’ run defense held opponents to only 53 yards on the ground, averaging over 210 yards per game.
Seven tackles for loss, spread among six Buckeyes, contributed to the modest rushing yield.
Ohio State’s offensive line also asserted itself, opening up holes for ball carriers to rack up 214 rushing yards – 78 more than Notre Dame was allowing per game – previously allowed by the Fighting Irish. 1.6 more yards per carry than.
Ohio State’s dominance in the trenches was steady during its playoff run. The Buckeyes rushed for four touchdowns against a Tennessee defense that had allowed a combined nine rushing scores in its previous 12 games.
Oregon looked completely overwhelmed on both lines in the Rose Bowl game, and the physicality of the Buckeyes’ defensive front seven showed in the most high-pressure spot of the Cotton Bowl, sealing the win against Texas.
Those three preceding performances were what made Notre Dame’s first drive such an upset – but also foreshadowed Ohio State’s ability to turn it around, which Day noted in his postgame press conference.
“That first drive went straight down the field,” he said. “We responded in a big way, never retreated. And… if you think about our progress in the playoffs, a big part of that [it is] The way we responded at the end of the season.”
Ohio State did not have a perfect championship season. In fact, the 2024 Buckeyes now stand as the only two-loss national champions since the Associated Press stopped awarding its titles before bowl games in 1968.
“Now it’s an even better story,” Day said of Ohio State taking advantage of the expanded playoffs to make this change. “Always in the back of my mind, I felt that the people of Ohio and the entire Buckeye Nation, after going through tough times and seeing a team and a group of coaches go through tough times, it meant even more to achieve our goals. There will be more.”
