If anyone has seen my posts on this board or Twitter before it's no secret I've been very critical of Day and at times said Ohio State should move on from him if a guy like Vrabel could be had. My point in making this post isn't to rehash those debates, though they will inevitably come up, it's to get a temperature check on where the fanbase is. I feel mildly more optimistic about Day's future here after the team showed up in the Peach Bowl (though plenty of classic flaws of the Day era like defense, special teams, and getting tight at the end reared their heads) but now that the National Championship is set to kick off in 2 hours I'm left, yet again, feeling unsatisfied with Ohio State's season and wondering where all this is going.
The thing that makes analyzing an Ohio State coach different than many other programs is that Ohio State has clear, tangible goals that are pretty much universally agreed upon by fans, administration, and coaches: beat Michigan, win the Big Ten, and win the national title. Programs like UNC, Baylor, UCLA, etc. may analyze success based on more abstract goals that are just about program stability and improvement, but Ohio State has 3 tangible objectives that can be graded on a simple pass/fail basis. You don't need me to remind you that Day has failed to achieve any of these three targets in the last two seasons. Expecting a national title every year is obviously impossible, even every 4 years would be a very tall ask, but you'd have liked for him to get one at this point given the historic talent he has had. More critically, the losses to Michigan (and not winning the Big Ten as a result) have really dampened these past two seasons. A loss to Michigan can never be excused, but losing in Ann Arbor in 2021 with all the circumstances around that game and against that good of a Michigan team can at least be understood and waved away as a blip if things get back on track. Obviously, that didn't happen, and the 2022 loss to Michigan is one of the most inexcusable losses in my time as a Buckeye fan. Ohio State had (in my opinion) the clearly better team at home and Ryan Day's team just let it slip away before totally giving up at the end. While I will say Day is facing better Michigan teams than post-2006 Tressell or Urban ever did, Ohio State is still miles ahead talent-wise. Also, losing to Michigan can in itself create better Michigan teams. Tressell and Urban consistently beating Michigan eased some of the angst (certainly not all) around not winning the national title later in their careers, and Day simply has not created that baseline for himself.
I don't think it is outlandish to say next season could make or break the Ryan Day era. I'm not sure Ohio State will outright fire him if things go poorly, but this job has a tendency to eat coaches who are not performing to the standard alive. The Tressell and Urban eras both ended with scandals swirling, but it's not like either coach was exactly at the top of their game and in the absolute thick of National Championship hunts. We will never fully know what goes on with these high-level decisions, and this not alleging some conspiracy to out either coach (especially w/r/t/ Urban, keeping ZS was just plain idiotic), but I do wonder if the end with both coaches goes differently if they had been taking home a natty every few seasons. If Ohio State fails again next year, I could really see Day being gone one way or another. This is certainly not a prediction of a scandal, for all the grief I give Day I truly believe he is a great guy, but this job just seems to have a way of outsing guys who aren't getting it done, and Day crucially does not even have the baseline of Michigan + B1G title that his predecessors did to fall back on.
Apologies for the super long post, just wanted to put my thoughts out somewhere with the CFB season wrapping up and I'm curious about what the consensus is here. Hopefully, we have more to cheer about this time next year.