Ryan Day also gets an opportunity to prove in just his second season as head coach of the Buckeyes he belongs on the same field as six-time national champion head coach Nick Saban, but Day wasn’t interested in talking about that this week.
“I’m probably not going to get into that right now just because we’re in the moment, and all that really matters is preparing for this game,” Day said. “I think when you start to take a step back you get distracted. Every minute of the day I tell the players should be spent on Alabama. That’s it.”
He wants their minds on football — not tickets, travel, last week’s win over Clemson or anything else — and is holding himself to the same standard.
“Certainly very, very honored to be in this situation, don’t get me wrong,” Day said. “It’s really about the players, the fact that these guys have an opportunity to now go play in this game and do something that would just be amazing.”
The 69-year-old Saban, who started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Kent State in 1973, has taken notice of the job the 41-year-old Day has done.
“He does a great job of coaching,” Saban said. “He’s a very good offensive sort of play caller. He’s got a great scheme on offense. Certainly does a great job of coaching his players to execute that scheme. They’re very well-coached in every phase, and their team plays with great intangibles, discipline, toughness, play hard. Seem to have great togetherness on their team.
“So I think those are all great indicators of what a great job Ryan Day does as a head coach and as a leader of his organization. I think he’s taken advantage of a great opportunity and certainly done an outstanding job with it, and they’ve got one of the best teams in the country, no doubt about that.”
From last year but still relevant:
— Marcus Hartman (@marcushartman) January 8, 2021
In the poll era, @OhiStateFB claims eight national championships, but at least twice as many Buckeye squads have been within a win of joining that list and failed https://t.co/LdhDeSkzgt
No Time To Reflect — Yet
Day acknowledged this is yet another noteworthy chapter in what has already been some story for him.
Brought in to help update Urban Meyer’s stale version of the spread offense in 2017, Day has ended up doing much more than that.
The New Hampshire native surprisingly was tapped to serve as interim head coach of the Buckeyes when Meyer was suspended at the beginning of the 2018 season.
Then he was chosen to replace Meyer full-time at the end of the season when the veteran decided to hang up his whistle out of concern for his health.
“I think hopefully after this game we’re able to take a deep breath — I hope anyways,” Day added with a wry smile. “I feel like during these past two years and even a little bit more I just haven’t been able to take a deep breath. I felt maybe after last year into March 1st was able to, and then the quarantine hit and then it just became chaos again.”
The Buckeyes are 23-1 under Day with two Big Ten championships and two College Football Playoff berths, but he has not had much of a chance to appreciate it yet.
“Looking forward to finishing this thing the right way and then taking a deep breath and decompressing and trying to reflect on what just happened this year,” he said.
Ohio State Buckeyes: Justin Fields named Big Ten MVP https://t.co/hjSVCRB4B6
— Marcus Hartman (@marcushartman) January 6, 2021
Saban’s Fond Memories of the Buckeye State
Saban is from West Virginia, but he has a close association to Ohio when it comes to football.
He played defensive back at Kent State from 1970-72 then started his coaching career at his alma mater on the advice of Golden Flashes coach Don James.
“I think I have to give all the credit for Don James, who was my college coach, calling me in one day and saying, I’d like for you to be a GA, and I immediately responded that I’m tired of going to school, I don’t really want to go to graduate school, and I don’t want to be a coach, so why would I do something like this.”
It turned out love would play a role in Saban staying after all, and the rest is history.
“My wife Terry had another year of school, so I really couldn’t go on and do anything else because she wanted to finish and we wanted her to finish and we had promised our parents that if they let us get married that we’d both graduate from college,” Saban said.
“When I did it, I just absolutely loved it. I think that it was a lot like being a player except you didn’t have to run wind sprints after practice or anything like that. But I liked the competitive nature of being a part of a team. And the preparation that goes into it was different, but it was something that was very self-satisfying.”
Saban left his alma mater for Syracuse in 1977, but he was back in the Buckeye State three years later when he joined Earle Bruce’s staff at Ohio State in 1980.
He coached defensive backs for the Buckeyes for two years before being swept out in a purge of the defensive staff following a disappointing ’81 season.
After stops at Navy, Michigan State and the Houston Oilers, he became the head coach at Toledo for a season then was the defensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns from 1991-94.
“I think Ohio is one of the great states in the United States when it comes to football,” Saban said. “Football tradition, really good high school football, lots of good football players. There’s still a lot of places in Ohio where the school is sort of the center of the community and there’s a lot of great support and fans for football programs.
“They’ve certainly produced from a high school level a tremendous number of very, very good players. Ohio State has always had great tradition in terms of the success that they’ve had on the field, and having had the opportunity to work there a few years, I kind of understand that tradition very well.”
MONDAY’S GAME
Ohio State vs. Alabama, 8 p.m., ESPN, 1410
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