Despite making the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff field, Ohio State fans have called for head coach Ryan Day to be fired due to a fourth-straight loss to arch-rival Michigan.
That doesn’t mean athletic director Ross Bjork sees that as a solution to the Buckeyes’ recent slump in the rivalry known as “The Game” nor the team falling short of the Big Ten title for a fourth-straight year. Day has a 66—10 record over seven years at Ohio State (10—2) with one Big Ten title in 2019 and a national championship game appearance in 2020.
“He loves being a Buckeye,” Bjork added. “So we’re going to support him at the highest level.”
Bjork, who became the athletic director in 2024 after five years at Texas A&M, praised Day and acknowledged the pressures of a big college football fan base and storied rivalry. For Bjork’s previous stop, Texas A&M has a rabid fan base with the fourth-largest collegiate stadium in the country and a rivalry with LSU to go with it.
“Coach Day and I just hit it off so well,” Bjork said. “I’ve been really, really impressed. Every single time I talked to him, I learn something.
“He’s innovative,” Bjork said. “He recruits at the highest level. He’s got a great staff.”
Day came on board as an assistant in 2017 with former head coach Urban Meyer. After Meyer retired, Day took over in his first FBS head coaching job.
Day could make a run for his first national title as Buckeyes head coach in the coming weeks, but Ohio State has a gauntlet to get through. The Buckeyes first host No. 9 Tennessee (10—2) in the quarterfinals on Dec. 21, and a win would lead to a quarterfinal contest in the Rose Bowl with top-ranked and unbeaten Oregon (13—0) on Jan. 1.
The semifinals and championship won’t get easier for the Buckeyes, even after an upset of the Ducks. Second-ranked Georgia (11—2) and fifth-ranked Texas (11—2) come into the playoff looking like serious title contenders.
“What we have to do is this whole ‘championship or bust’ mentality, you want that as the goal, but it has to be about the process,” Bjork said. “To me, we’ve got to maybe change some conversations a little bit. I think we need to maybe just approach things a little bit differently.”
That said, a national championship might not dwarf a fourth-straight loss to Michigan for some in the Buckeyes fan base. Bjork doesn’t want that to affect things in-house though.
“When you first come off those types of things, there’s a lot of emotion,” Bjork said. “And then as time goes on, you’ve got to get refocused because you know what you’ve done in the past does not affect what’s going on moving forward. Everything is out in front of us.”
