Ryan Day acknowledges that he was “very surprised,” and caught off-guard, when he received the call from Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith on Aug. 1 that he would be the Buckeyes’ acting head coach while Urban Meyer was on administrative leave.
There was reason for Day to be surprised – fellow offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson and defensive coordinator Greg Schiano have both been college football head coaches before, while there are several other coaches on the Buckeyes’ staff with more experience.
Day, however, was the choice, and now, the Buckeyes’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach will continue to be Ohio State’s head coach for the first three games of the season as Meyer serves a three-game suspension.
Going into Saturday’s season opener against Oregon State (12:07 p.m., ABC), Day’s had a lot on his plate, as he’s continued to coach the Buckeyes’ quarterbacks and work in tandem with Wilson on coordinating the offense while assuming head coaching responsibilities – a balancing act that Day admits hasn’t been easy.
“If you saw me in one of the scrimmages, I don’t know if you would have thought I balanced it very well,” Day said with a chuckle during his first press conference as interim head coach at Ohio State on Monday. “I was trying to coach the quarterbacks, call the plays and organize the scrimmage, and I looked like my hair was on fire. So it was a challenge. And there’s been times where I’ve felt like I’ve been drinking through a firehose, to be honest.”
Now that he has been Ohio State’s acting head coach for nearly a full month, though, and has led the Buckeyes through more than three weeks of practices, Day feels as though he’s been able to get his feet under him.
“The expectation of Ohio State is you win every game, and I understand that. So there’s that added, you know pressure there, that you feel. But every day it’s become more normal, to be honest with you,” Day said. “The first few days, it was a lot. And then after the first week, it became more normal, and every day, it becomes more normal. And I think that the players understand that as well.”
A big reason why it has become more normal, Day said, is the help he has received from the rest of Ohio State’s coaching staff – not only Schiano and Wilson, but also director of sports performance Mickey Marotti and the Buckeyes’ other assistant coaches, as well.
“Greg Schiano, Kevin Wilson; what they’ve done for me during this time is something that I’ll always be in debt for,” Day said. “Their counsel, and what they’ve done for me, has been really something I won’t forget. And I have so much respect for both of those guys, and for the whole staff. This is an experienced staff. It’s got to be the best staff in America. When you think about (defensive line coach) Larry Johnson, (linebackers coach) Billy Davis, (co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach) Alex Grinch, when you go all through the different guys we have on our staff to make a lot of experience, real professionals.
“And I probably – well I know I didn’t – I didn't do enough justice to what Mickey Marotti's meant to this program during this time,” Day said later in his press conference. “Mickey Marotti is the heart and soul of this program. And what he's done for everybody here during this time is amazing. He has the pulse on this team, he works with these guys through the summer, and he is the guy behind the scenes that keeps this thing together. He is the glue.”
“The first few days, it was a lot. And then after the first week, it became more normal, and every day, it becomes more normal.”– Ryan Day on becoming Ohio State's interim head coach
Day says he has also been impressed by Ohio State’s players, and how some of them have stepped up as leaders to keep the team focused despite Meyer’s absence.
“That’s a tribute to the culture here,” Day said. “Our culture is strong. The culture leads at Ohio State. And the culture that the leaders here, not only coaches but the leaders of the program, the kids, especially our captains, have set the example for, is what's driven this thing for the past few weeks.”
Ultimately, though, Day is the one in charge of making all decisions that a head coach would make until Meyer returns, and Schiano – who was the head coach at Rutgers from 2001 to 2011, and the head coach of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2012 and 2013 – says that while he has tried to use his head coaching experience to help Day, he’s trusted Day to make those decisions without trying to stand in his way.
“As Ryan has told our staff and told our players, he's holding the spot until Coach gets back,” Schiano said. “So we have a program, we have a philosophy, we have core values; we're sticking to the plan. But within the plan there's daily decisions that must be made, and I told Ryan, ‘Listen, hear me out, hear Kevin out, but at the end of the day you have to do what you feel comfortable with, because your name now is in front of that program.’”
Greg Schiano will use his head coaching experience to help Ryan Day, but he also wants to allow Day to do his job.
Schiano, who is also Ohio State’s associate head coach, says he has been impressed with how Day has handled the responsibility so far.
“Ryan is certainly qualified to do this,” Schiano said. “I'm so impressed, just working underneath and observing him and trying to help him, that, I mean, he's got the ‘it’ (factor).”
Day said he will call offensive plays while handling head coaching responsibilities from the sideline on Saturday, but that he and Wilson will work together in that regard as they already have. Schiano will also be down on the sideline, as he was for most of last season, but said he does not expect his gameday communication with Day to be much different than it would be with Meyer.
“We’re constantly in communication, he and I,” Schiano said of his gameday communication with Meyer. “But again, it's the head coach's job to make the final decision. You can take the information, and often times you have to take that information and make a decision in about 12 seconds; it's not like you have an hour to think about it. So that's what Ryan will do, and that's where I'm here to help him, that's where Kevin's here to help him and our whole staff is.”
One thing that Day wanted to make clear both to his team and in his press conference on Monday, though, is that he isn’t trying to replace Meyer. He’s just trying to keep the program moving in the right direction until Meyer is allowed to return.
“It has been a whirlwind,” Day said of serving as interim head coach. “But my goal in this thing was never to replace Coach. That’s not what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do is empower the coaches, empower the leaders and just keep this thing moving, and I think we’ve done that.”
