The game was over, the humiliation complete.
I ask you, what was Ryan Day doing meandering on the Ohio Stadium field while his emotionally-charged Ohio State players fought with bitter rival Michigan after another gutting loss to the Wolverines?
You want a reason to fire Day? Here it is.
It has nothing to do with losing for the fourth consecutive time to Michigan, which is what his eventual demise will be all about. This has to do with unthinkable inaction when his team’s world was falling apart.
How else can I say this? GET YOUR TEAM OFF THE FIELD.
‘I don’t know all the details of it, but I know those guys were looking to put a flag on our field and our guys weren’t going to let that happen,’ Day said after the game.
Here’s a novel idea: how about your guys don’t ‘let’ Michigan, which can’t consistently throw a forward pass to save its football life, suck the oxygen from the biggest game of the season in a critical second half?
I don’t care that Michigan’s players wanted to plant that big “M” flag on the block “O” at the 50. Don’t care that you or anyone at Ohio State thinks it’s disrespectful or classless.
GET OFF THE FIELD ― before something much uglier than another loss to Michigan unfolds.
Sprint into the fray, and scream at your players to get in the locker room. Instead of standing on the field from afar, a dumbfounded look on your face.
Because this game, in the words of Day himself, is different.
“This game is a war,” Day said earlier this week. “Any time there is a war, there’s consequences and casualties. Then there’s plunder and the rewards that come with it.”
How incredibly foretelling. It’s almost as if Day were writing his own coaching tombstone days before it all played out.
But instead of singing the school’s alma mater and skulking into the locker room, Day allowed his team of 18-22-year-old men to engage those who won the war — and then began to plunder.
This isn’t the toughness and attitude Day proclaimed this team had after it was meticulously built this offseason for this moment. In one mentally long and draining November afternoon, it became a desperation season of throwing $41 million at a problem – $20 million for the roster, $21 million for the coaching staff – and hoping it would go away.
A mentally and physically tough team doesn’t get pushed around at home by a one-dimensional, double-digit underdog with no business winning the game — then stay on the field because they don’t want the mean men to plant a flag on their field.
Boo-freaking-hoo.
There are consequences to losing, and there are casualties. There are winners and there are losers, and they are unmistakable after something like this.
Michigan, whose coach is a known NCAA cheat who deleted 52 text messages from another known NCAA cheat when both were caught in a scam to, you know, cheat, is somehow the winner in all of this.
Then there’s Day, who owns a near-flawless 47-1 record vs. every team in the Big Ten not named Michigan. And is 1-4 vs. war.
You don’t lose at war 80 percent of the time, and get another shot with another loaded team and another $41 million. You get canned.
And if there were any doubt about where Day and this team is headed, just look at what played out after Ohio State quarterback Will Howard’s final, futile pass fluttered aimlessly in the cold Columbus afternoon and officially ended Ohio State’s undoing in the biggest game of the season.
‘I’ll find out exactly what happened, but it’s our field,’ Day said. ‘There are some prideful guys that weren’t just going to let that go down.”
Memo to Ohio State: you’re not “protecting your house” if it’s post-ass kicking. Get off the field, already.
The Game is over. The Big Ten championship is gone. The millions have been spent and blown.
The College Football Playoff is still a lock, but who among us thinks this team will shake off yet another Michigan meltdown and win a national title – thereby saving Day’s job – by winning four consecutive postseason games?
Firing a coach who has won 47 of 48 Big Ten games against teams not named Michigan is insane. It would be like firing Georgia coach Kirby Smart because he can’t beat Alabama.
But the noise in the system will begin with another Michigan debacle on the field. When what happened off the field after the loss is just as damaging.
The game is over, the humiliation complete. There are consequences and casualties to war.
No one understands that better than Ryan Day.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
