The Eleven Warriors Web Report comes to you from the Spectrum News 1 studios in downtown Columbus, featuring our own Beau Bishop and Dan Hope along with former Buckeye linebacker Joshua Perry.
Ryan Day is officially set to be the 25th head coach in Ohio State football history, and in just three weeks from Tuesday, Urban Meyer will be coaching the final game of his seven-year tenure with the Buckeyes.
Ohio State will conclude its season by playing Washington in this year's Rose Bowl, and we'll preview that game more as the Buckeyes' trip to Pasadena nears closer. This week, though – with just one week to go until Day will introduce the majority of his first recruiting class during the early signing period – we take a look at how the program could move forward with its new head coach.
Day can't simply try to be Meyer, who came to Ohio State with two national championships on his resume and added another in Columbus. So Perry says Day, who has never been a full-time head coach before, needs to start his work on the recruiting trail by selling the program and everything it has to offer.
"You've got to sell the school, you've got to sell the program – which is time-tested to be a very successful program – and then you're looking at the other things too," Perry said. "Columbus is a hell of a city. You can sell Columbus to a guy."
Another thing Hope believes Day can sell, particularly to quarterbacks and other offensive players, is the success that Dwayne Haskins and Ohio State's offense had this season under his leadership as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, with Haskins making the trip to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist this past weekend and setting himself up to be a likely first-round pick if he enters the 2019 NFL draft.
"You can now sell Dwayne Haskins," Day said. "I think Ryan Day's got that right there on his plate, and now I think you've got to go and build a new staff around you, bring in some new guys who can also bring their selling points and help them build a staff that will make players at all positions want to continue to come play for Ohio State."
Day has huge shoes to fill in replacing Meyer, whose Ohio State teams have all won at least 11 games and all beaten Michigan, which won't make it easy for Day to sustain the same level of success. But there is a blueprint from some of college football's other top programs for a younger assistant with no head coaching experience to take over a program and compete for national championships.
"We've seen Lincoln Riley, who's started to do that at Oklahoma, where he has already started to build his brand," Hope said. "(Clemson coach) Dabo Swinney, when he was hired, was a wide receivers coach that nobody knew about, and people were questioning that hire. And look at what he's built. He's built that program to something that it's never been before. So to expect (Day) to come in and be Urban Meyer, you can't expect that ... but I think there's a lot of belief in Ryan Day. I think he's a very talented young coach."
For more analysis on Ohio State's future on Day, as well as a look back at Haskins' season and an early look ahead to the Rose Bowl, watch the Eleven Warriors Report on Spectrum News 1, premiering at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
