Once upon a time, Eleven Warriors dot com was... well, let's be generous and say that what we didn't have in readership, we made up for in moxie. Some of that moxie came from me, professional idiot, as I volunteered for basically every random football-related duty that was available to a marginally successful Ohio State sports media outlet.
In August of 2011, that included heading out to Media Day and taking a bunch of pictures with our intern. In the wake of the firing of Jim Tressel, everything surrounding Ohio State football was imbued with a kind of nervous energy that fans and the media alike had mistaken for "confidence," but would find out later was really "flop sweat."
Anyway, at the time I thought that getting to go to Media Day and take pictures was neat, but seven years after the fact has elevated that day to "haha holy crap what was I looking at?"
Witness the Ohio State coaching staff! Comprised of a veritable island of misfit toys that would include the future head coach of the Tennessee Titans, Jim Tressel's brother, a literal walrus, and uh... Nick Siciliano, who emerged from Vault 53 after the apocalypse somehow unscathed.
That's not all, of course. Media Day 2011 gave you a very young Ryan Shazier, Adam Griffin chilling with his dad, probably the only picture in existence where expectations of excellence for Joe Bauserman, Braxton Miller, and Kenny Guiton could be relatively evenly distributed between them, and Luke Fickell looking really, really nervous.
He had reason to sweat. He was appointed CEO of a company that brings in hundreds of millions of dollars through televised football excellence and expected to deliver immediate results. That his heart didn't immediately explode is a testament to the kind of person he is.
Still, when I got home and started looking through the pictures, I noticed two things. First: Ohio State clearly had talent in spades. Some of these guys looked ready to win a national championship that day. Just point them to the bowl, and they'd win it.
Second, there wasn't a single doubt in my mind that Luke Fickell was in way over his head. My heart told me that Ohio State's nascent talent would get them through 2011, but it turns out that my heart is not great at football analysis.
Going through the Eleven Warriors 2011 archives is really kind of incredible. Every month in the first half of the year features some fresh hell, waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting Buckeye public (yours truly had the dubious honor of writing the Skull Session the morning after the initial Yahoo! report came out about Jim Tressel), transitioning to anger and sorrow about Tressel's dismissal, which eventually gives way to some tepid excitement about Fickell and the 2011 season, which in turn quickly rots into even more anger after Purdue Harbor, but by the end of November everything is right again with the hiring of Urban Meyer.
Everything eventually worked out for us, the fans, but reflecting on 2011 always makes me wonder what the hell that year had to have been like for Luke Fickell, and if he had any idea what he was walking into when he was made interim coach.
Ryan Day tracks similarly to Fickell. Day is a well-regarded young assistant with head coaching aspirations, and has experience at various levels and positions (including in the NFL). Like Fickell, he was essentially a "coordinator in waiting," only to see his number get called long before he ever really expected it to.
It's not a fair position to put someone. Even if he's only head coach mostly in name, and even if it's only for a few days, the mental stress of taking on the responsibilities of an Urban Meyer isn't exactly what the dude is contracted for. "Next man up" only really works if you actually know the job that you're getting ready for; backup players can do it because they know the job they have to jump into at a moment's notice, but Day hasn't been given that luxury. That's something else that he shares with Fickell.
I don't know if Ryan Day is ready to lead Ohio State, should his services be needed past August if Urban is suspended or fired. That's not a statement against Day's character or leadership abilities: it's more of an understanding that the duties of a head coach are vastly different than what Day has had to deal with previously. The Buckeyes could come out and win every game by 50, or trip on their own shoelaces and fall into a bowl sponsored by off-brand Cheetos.
I hope that it's the former, but if it's the latter, remember this: many of the controversies that Ohio State has found itself embroiled in, past and present, have been a result of too much power concentrated in too few hands.
That has allowed coaches and administrators to think that they have the leeway to allow players to skirt NCAA rules (albeit extremely stupid NCAA rules) and lie about it, protect people who don't deserve protection, and in the most extreme cases, allow significant abuse to happen at what's supposed to be an institution that strives for openness and accountability.
All of those things are varying levels of wrong. All of them might've been prevented by breaking up the walled-off fiefdoms within the Ohio State athletic department where those in charge are accountable only to themselves. Restricting media access, while a sensible move from a certain perspective, only serves to build up a barrier around a program that has not been nearly transparent enough for almost a month now.
And from a football perspective, it kind of sucks for guys like Ryan Day. I don't expect the 2018 Ohio State football team to end up 6-7; in addition to a pretty favorable schedule, there's just too much talent on the staff and the roster for a huge drop-off no matter what happens.
This is, of course, totally moot if Ohio State comes back in a week and reinstates Urban Meyer back to his former position. But if we're sitting in front of our televisions in mid-October, feeling bad for a heavily perspiring Ryan Day and wondering what might've been, it'll be important to remind ourselves that none of it was inevitable.
