Welcome to the Skull Session.
#DevelopedHere
15 @NFL Combine Invites for your 2024 National Champions pic.twitter.com/rHyaUqixUG
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) February 13, 2025
Have a good Friday.
“THEY CALL THEM CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS.” Ohio State’s staff has experienced considerable turnover since the Buckeyes won a national championship on Jan. 20. In an interview this week with Dom Tiberi of 10TV, Ryan Day said that turnover has been worth it for the national championship that preceded it.
“They call them champagne problems when something like this happens,” Day said. “It’s part of the business. Some great opportunities out there.”
Champagne problems.
This is the life of a national champion.
Whatever problems Ohio State has had this offseason, champagne or otherwise, Day told Tiberi he’s excited about the staff he’s assembled in 2025. His excitement starts with Brian Hartline, whom Day promoted to offensive coordinator last week.
“I feel great about the staff we’re putting together. Some huge pieces that are still part of this program,” Day said. “For instance, Brian Hartline – you talk about sacrifice – here’s a guy who was named coordinator (in 2023), and I ended up calling plays that year, but he grew that year. Then, we decided to bring in Chip (Kelly), and he had to take a step back. But he learned from Chip, and I thought, down the stretch, he did some of his best work as I’ve seen from him as a coach. Some of the passing install, the route concepts, the coaching that was done there was at a high, high level.
“Certainly, Keenan (Bailey) helped him a lot, and Billy (Fessler) helped him a lot, and I was much involved with it. But you could see him growing as the season went on. … Some guys would say, ‘Well, wait a minute, I’m going somewhere else, he didn’t name me the coordinator.’ Well, now he’s gonna be the coordinator, now he’s gonna call plays. That loyalty and that patience will pay off. I think he’ll be the best coordinator in the country.”
Day’s praise continued as he explained Bailey and Fessler’s promotions and Tyler Bowen’s arrival on staff.
“Keenan Bailey will be a co-coordinator. He’s done an unbelievable job for us. He’s recruited at a high level. I think you will see our tight ends continue to grow and play at a high level. You could see Gee Scott make an impact, and that (position) will continue to grow,” Day said. “Billy Fessler, I was extremely impressed with him and the work he did. If you talked to Will (Howard), he would agree the impact he made last year was important. He understands what we’re doing. … Quarterback position, that’s a touchy one for me, so I trust Billy, and I think he will do a great job.
“Tyler Bowen will be our run game coordinator and coach the offensive line. He has three years of play-calling experience at Virginia Tech. He’s been well-respected everywhere he’s gone. I think he brings a lot to the table. For Brian being a first-time play-caller, there’s another guy in the room working on the run game who has been a play-caller as well. I think that’s really important. You look at it from a different lens when you’ve been a play-caller before. He played offensive line. He knows the offensive line really well. He knows the run game really well. I think they will mesh really well together. … He’s very, very talented.”
I’m a simple man.
If Day believes in Hartline, Bailey, Fessler and Bowen, I believe in them, too.
THE TIMELESS PRINCIPLES. We looked ahead in the first section. Let’s look back in the second.
In Day’s interview with Tiberi, the head coach reflected on Ohio State’s national championship. When Tiberi asked the question, “With this team, what are you most proud of?” Day had a profound answer.
“When you think of the changes that happen in college football on a daily basis with the NIL, the transfer portal, the playoffs, then conference realignment – I mean, there are so many changes – and this generation is different, and the game is different, but I think what separated us were the timeless principles that have been there since the beginning of mankind,” Day said.
“Sacrifice, I think of some of these guys who sacrificed their opportunity to go to the NFL like TreVeyon Henderson, Quinshon Judkins … Donovan Jackson who went from guard to tackle. Resilience, guys who continued to fight throughout the season. Perseverance. Faith, you know the story of our team and the faith. Loyalty. You start picking out all these virtues and all these timeless principles that have been around since the beginning of time. Those are the things that I believe separated us in a time where there’s complete chaos in college football.”
As I listened to Day, I remembered the phrase, “Often imitated, never duplicated.” All season, people talked about Ohio State’s $20.2 million roster, even though Oregon ($23 million) and Texas ($22.2 million) spent more, and LSU ($20.1 million) and Georgia ($18.3 million) weren’t far behind. While those teams imitated the Buckeyes, those teams could not duplicate what the Buckeyes accomplished because no other roster had the sacrifice, resilience, perseverance, faith and loyalty as The Brotherhood.
This offseason The Brotherhood will evolve, Day said, but its foundation will remain the same.
“The first thought (since the championship) was reinforce the culture, reinforce the foundation, reinforce what we’ve done,” Day said. “We had a meeting with (strength coach) Mick (Marotti), myself and the leaders, and I think we all agreed that we have to rebuild it. This is a whole new team. We have to start from scratch and then rebuild it. That’s the fun part of a journey. It will be a new staff, a new team. It starts with Texas in Game 1.”
OHIO GOV. JIM TRESSEL? Jim Tressel has been confirmed as Ohio’s lieutenant governor. Could he make a run for Ohio governor next? That’s the question Joe Vardon of The Athletic asked the former Ohio State football coach this week:
As for Tressel’s political future, he insisted it’s not something he is thinking about now. He would either have to change his thinking, or hire someone to do it for him, because he would need to raise money in preparation for a likely expensive, crowded Republican primary. Current Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has already announced his candidacy, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech titan and former adviser to President Donald J. Trump is among those expected to join the field.
“I’m going to try to hold extremely true to the fact that I’m not worried about anything other than what I can learn today,” Tressel said. “I don’t even know fully what the governor does on a day-to-day basis, and I just watched him for like two days. But I have given no thought to any sequence or timeline. Any of that kind of thing. I’m just trying to get through today.”
If Tressel did run for governor, Vardon believes some Ohioans, namely his potential gubernatorial opponents, would use his scandalous departure from Ohio State in 2010 as a reason to question his capabilities to lead the Buckeye State. However, Tressel would be prepared if and when those questions came. To his credit, he was when Vardon asked him about “Tattoogate” this week.
“The way our time ended at Ohio State was disappointing, on a lot of levels,” said Tressel. “My number one care and concern was for our student-athletes and then the program itself. We know that the world of college athletics has changed dramatically, and as you reflect back on it, maybe some of the decisions that some of our guys made, obviously during the rules of engagement at the moment, were not appropriate and there had to be sanctions.”
Pressed for his reflection on his own involvement, and subsequent punishment, for his role in the scandal, Tressel said, “Well, the decision I made was to sign the NCAA form that all of our players were doing appropriate things — and that wasn’t the truth.”
Tressel said he should have been more forceful in questioning his players when he was originally notified of their potential wrongdoing, but was trying to maintain the confidentiality of an ongoing federal investigation, and said he should have hired a lawyer.
Tressel, conceding that it was a dark time in his life, recalled hearing from his mentor, a retired English professor, who told him: “I hope you know that your greatest impact is ahead of you.”
“And I wasn’t feeling that at the moment,” Tressel said. “I was disappointed that we were at the moment we were in.”
Look, I don’t mean to dive too much into politics here – and a reminder to all readers, please keep it civil in the comments – but I think it would be awesome if Tressel ran for governor. He is one of the state’s most beloved public figures, and he’ll have two years of experience as a lieutenant governor under his belt, so I have to imagine Tressel could garner enough support to at least enter his name into the race.
Alas.
This is a conversation for another time and another website.
For now, I’ll think of how awesome it is that The Senator became The Lieutenant Governor.
OLYMPIC VILLAGE. It’s been a minute since I have mentioned Ohio State’s Olympic sports in the Skull Session. That said, let’s look at where the Buckeyes’ winter and spring sports will be this weekend for their respective competitions, games and meets:
- No. 2 Ohio State women’s hockey: Off
- No. 3 Ohio State men’s gymnastics: Off
- No. 4 Ohio State men’s tennis: No. 21 UCF in Waco, Texas (Friday), No. 6 Columbia or No. 11 Stanford in Waco (Saturday)
- No. 5 Ohio State men’s fencing: Off
- No. 8 Ohio State men’s hockey: Wisconsin at Value City Arena (Friday and Saturday)
- No. 8 Ohio State wrestling: No. 1 Penn State at the Covelli Center (Friday)
- No. 12 Ohio State rifle: MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Sunday)
- No. 13 Ohio State men’s swimming and diving: Ohio State Winter Invitational at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion (weekend)
- No. 14 Ohio State women’s swimming and diving: Ohio State Winter Invitational at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion (weekend)
- No. 15 Ohio State men’s volleyball: Lindenwood at the Covelli Center (Saturday),
- No. 17 Ohio State women’s tennis: Duke in Durham, North Carolina (Saturday)
- No. 20 Ohio State women’s gymnastics: Minnesota at the Covelli Center (Sunday)
- No. 25 Ohio State women’s golf: Spartan Suncoast Invitational in Sarasota, Florida (Sunday)
- Ohio State artistic swimming: Richmond and Florida in Richmond, Virginia (weekend)
- Ohio State men’s track and field: David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston (weekend)
- Ohio State women’s track and field: Clemson Tiger Paw Invite (weekend)
- Baseball: Arizona State in Phoenix (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)
- Softball: Florida State and Missouri (Friday), Alabama (Saturday) and Clemson and UCF (Sunday) in Clearwater, Florida
- Men’s lacrosse: Air Force at the Ohio State Lacrosse Stadium (Saturday)
- Women’s lacrosse: Louisville at the Ohio State Lacrosse Stadium (Saturday)
That’s a whole lot of action.
Go Bucks!
SONG OF THE DAY. "If This World Were Mine" - Luther Vandross.
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