This is lengthy, so the TLDR version is aside from 1998 and 2006, up until mid-January of 2015 the aspirations were simply 1) beat Michigan, 2) win the Big Ten. With each passing season the urgency seems to rise higher to the point that we should be expected to look like the best team in the country week in and week out. Cries of "we're never going to beat (insert whoever appears to be the best team in the country based on the previous week) playing like this" are a dime a dozen. Maybe it's just the board, but it seems anything short of a NC is seen as a failure of a season anymore. Until Saban accomplished what is unlikely to be replicated, I don't feel like that was the case. The hiring of Urban and Urban's national success 2006-2014 seemed to entitle our fans to the idea that we should be able to replicate Saban's results here.

I grew loving Ohio State football with my first memories being the early 90s. The trajectory of the program has been great over 3.5 decades now. I remember the tie in 1992 that Gee celebrated and still shake my head. I remember finally beating Illinois being refreshing...crazy looking back. We were coming out of some pretty meager days. 1993 had the exciting wins over Washington and PSU, the salvaged tie at Wisconsin, and ended with a resounding dud in Ann Arbor. Beating Michigan and going to the Rose Bowl was the goal and we fell short, 28-0. 1995 felt like the year we were going to achieve the trifecta - beat TTUN, win the Big Ten, go to the Rose Bowl. The early season wins over Washington, ND, and PSU legitimized those aspirations. We all know what happened, but even in November, I don't recall much if any chatter about a NC - it was simply "beat Michigan". Maybe it was because Nebraska was a juggernaut; maybe it was because of Coop's history. I suspect the latter. In '96 it felt like we were right there with the best teams in the nation and there were definitely some whispers of NC opportunity, but national perception seemed to be that we were perhaps a step behind the two highly talented Florida schools and the Michigan monkey remained and was excrutiatingly not conquered. 1998 was the first year I recall very distinct NC hopes from the start. That team was stacked and we were pre-season #1. Plus TTUN had just won a share, so it left us all the more thirsty. Again, we all know the result, though not at the hands of Michigan. 

No one went into 2002 with NC expectations. We were preseason #13. It was just fun. Weak after weak the excitement built but as we survived game after game, the focus remained on getting past Michigan. After that November 23 win, anything else was going to be a cherry on top. The Bucks were told they had no chance vs Miami but the magical season continued and the NC drought ended! With Maurice gone in '03 no one expected a repeat and it seemed we were still basking in the rays of 2002. In reality, Michigan robbed us of playing in the NCG that year, but most were still contented by 2002.

In 2005 the excitement was for the Texas matchup more so than the season expectations. 2006 was the second time in my life I recall distinct NC hopes from the start, spring-boarded by the previous season's Fiesta Bowl win over ND. After winning the Game of the Century, Glendale felt like a formality. Unfortunately, it was not. In New Orleans in 2007 the air felt like it was strange that we made it there after losing to Illinois and backing in. 2010 was perhaps the closest to 1998 and 2006 I can recall for NC hopes, but it was more of a "let's see" approach as by then the strong sentiment was that Tress could beat TTUN with annual certainty but he was now a clear step behind on the top 5 stage.

Enter Urban. 2012 was in no way the traditional NC contending team, but 12-0 was nice and it was frustrating that we could have had a ND team we absolutely had a puncher's chance against. 2013 felt like we were in the race, but there were more questions (especially on D) than certainties. MSU ended that. In late September of 2014 we were ranked 22nd. We never broke the top 10 in October. On December 5 we were worried about starting a 3rd string QB vs. Wisconsin. On December 6 we destroyed them 59-0 and were now just hoping to make the CFP over TCU. The Bama matchup rang like the 2002 Miami matchup all over again (meaning most expected we had no shot) but with the added burden of the SEC bowl game record on top. You know the story.

Within days of winning that 2014 NC I remember threads of "how many more NCs will Urban win at Ohio State?" 2015 was the 3rd year in my lifetime I felt like our fans genuinely expected a NC. It landed with the same disappointment of '98 and '06. 

Looking back, I think January, 2015 was when the expectation changed. Beating Michigan had become routine with 10 straight wins outside of the lost year that was 2011. Winning the Big Ten had become commonplace: Tress accomplished at least a share in each of his last 6 seasons, the 2012 team was denied a chance but otherwise would have likely won it, the 2013 missed narrowly, and the 2014 team accomplished it to the tune of 59-0. And the Rose Bowl was now no longer the prize.

The answer to that January, 2015 question of "how many more NCs would Urban win at OSU?' was depressingly zero. But at that point as a coach he'd just won 3 in the last 9 calendar years - coincidentally, 3 was the same number of NCs Saban had at Bama at that point. The expectation was officially NC or bust and the sentiment was that our program was now as good as Bama's. In fact, according to a concerning portion of our fans, "Michigan was no longer our rival, Alabama was". Urban's teams at OSU not only would never win another NC, they would never score another point in a CFP game. But none the less, the annual expectation 2015-2018 was "NC or bust".

Day not only inherited Urban's talent - he inherited our fanbase's sky-high expectations of Urban's teams right from the start. The standard for Day wasn't even Urban's last 4 seasons...it was explicitly Urban's 2014 NC result (but without the blemish of a loss of course). The wildest part is that Day almost immediately lived up to the sky high expectations. The 2019 team was as good as any in the country, utterly destroyed a top 10 Michigan team in Ann Arbor, won the Big Ten, and painfully missed a chance at victory in the CFP. The 2020 team navigated arguably the toughest season of circumstances in the last 50+ of Buckeye football and finished as national runner up to a historically good Bama team under Saban (who had now just won his 6th NC at Bama and 7th overall). Stacked against the finishes of Urban's 6 bowl eligible teams, these results from Day's first two campaigns would have ranked decisively as 2nd and 3rd best behind only 2014 in terms of proximity to a NC.

The common sentiments after that 2020 season were that Day was utterly robbed of a chance to play for a NC in 2019 and the mountain with Big Ten covid rules and the juggernaut of Bama was too high to surmount in 2020. Michigan was a complete disaster and their fans wanted Harbaugh fired.

The loss to Oregon in 2021 remains Day's worst on paper to this date (lowest ranked opponent at least). But that squad bounced back and rose to #2 in the AP with a 56-7 dismantling of #7 MSU to get there. We didn't know it at the time, but on that snowy day Up North in November of 2021, OSU was cheated out of the opportunity to accomplish all 3 of their goals that year.  Now we have the discomfort of knowing Michigan had stolen the play calls - at the time we had the discomfort of sensing we were "soft". 2022 was more seasoned and the highest of expectations returned with that. No team would come within 10 points of that team in the regular season leading the the finale. But Michigan would inexplicably (at the time) beat OSU by 22 at home. This was when I recall the strong sentiment of "we have a problem with Day". Cheated out of the Big Ten title goal, the Bucks backed into the CFP and came within a point of beating the best team in the nation with bad luck once again prevalent. 2023 honestly is amazing in retrospect that we navigated to 11-0 with such mediocre QB play. But the field was wide open so the now blood-thirsty demand again was "beat Michigan and win the NC". As we know, Michigan was caught that year illegally scouting OSU, in what would reveal the 3-year cheating scandal. Michigan cheating their way to a NC has only raised the demand for a fresh (legitimate) NC of our own.

Of Saban's 7 NC teams, 5 suffered a loss. Of Urban's 3, each suffered a loss. When OSU loses our fans freak. When OSU fails to dominate our fans freak. This program isn't about lowering expectations. Beat TTUN. Win the Big Ten. Compete for a NC. Cumulatively, we've been cheated out of 8 of those 9 goal opportunities the last 3 years. In the year prior, one of those goal opportunities was robbed from us (the Michigan game cancellation). When not cheated out of those goals, Day is 1 for 1 beating Michigan, 2 for 2 winning the Big Ten and 0 for 3 at the Natty, despite arguably being on the doorstep in 2022 and 2019 certainly having a "what if" aftertaste. In my lifetime, the angst has never felt higher and it feels the underlying tension is that a great portion of our more emotional fans feel that OSU still somehow should have been able to beat those 3 Michigan teams that cheated to the extent of knowing the very plays being called. Rather than acknowledging that Michigan's cheating stripped us of most of our goals (8 of the last 9) and retrospectively looking back on our 2021-2023 teams with some level of grace and sense of loss, those fans instead are all the more demanding in their urgency for Day to immediately reprove his capability, vanquish Michigan, and abruptly return focus to the loftier goals of NCs.

All of our 2024 goals remain firmly on the table. The first - beating Michigan - we should finally get a fair shake at for the first time since 2019. The second of winning the Big Ten is FAR more difficult than in the Tressel era where losing to PSU could still result in a conference title share, and more difficult than in the Urban era (where he achieved that goal at a rate of just 50%), as Oregon, USC, UW, and UCLA have now joined the conference. But certainly still within our own destiny to control. The third has only been achieved twice in the last 50 years. 

My take - enjoy the journey. 2002's journey had more scares than a spook house and never felt like a realistic outcome until the Fiesta Bowl was well underway. 2014's NC was never more than a prayer out of reach by most regards until the scoring rush in the 2nd quarter of the Sugar Bowl. And though they didn't result in NCs, the wins over Michigan in years like 2005, 2006, 2016, 2018, and 2019 were as special as any. Woody always saw the NC as a cherry on top. Prioritize beating Michigan, then just make the most of any subsequent opportunities. Perhaps we'd be best served to share the same perspective.