- Coach Ryan Day thanks for joining us.
I know the Alumni Association is glad to hear from you
and we just wanted to catch your thoughts
now that you've had a little bit of chance to reflect,
it's been about a month.
Just what your thoughts were in regards to the whole season,
not just the season itself,
but everything leading up to it.
What was 2020, like for you as a coach
and your whole team and program?
- Yeah, I mean I guess how much time do you have? (chuckles)
It was quite a run.
And I think the best thing I did was take a deep breath
for a few days and decompress after the game.
It was an emotional game, you know,
it obviously didn't go the way we want it to.
And so I didn't sleep for about three or four days.
Literally didn't sleep, I couldn't sleep.
Going through so many different things
and trying to evaluate what just happened, you know,
and the further I get away from it
that game the more proud I am, you know,
I'm sticking on my chest a little bit more because,
to think back on everything that happened,
it's unbelievable.
The way that we played in that Clemson game
and to kind of avenge that loss
and have an opportunity to play for the whole thing.
And you know, looking at that last game,
it's kind of hard to evaluate
because of all the things that we went through.
- Not just--
- You know, no spring, you know, no pre-season,
the season's canceled,
then we fight to get the season back,
then there's games canceled, there's guys who are out,
there's contact tracing, there's virtual meetings,
we're shut down, we're not...
I mean, it was just unbelievable.
And in a profession where routine is so important
and detail is so important, things became really gray.
And so now we're focused on getting back to work
and having a whole season and having a whole spring practice
and a pre-season and an off-season program to get back
to really the edge that we know.
So we'll get back to that game.
- What do you think the players,
probably the seniors or any of the players
who are departing,
what do you think that the team itself will take
from the 2020 experience as a whole?
- I mean, I talked about this before
that one of the reasons you get into coaching
isn't for the money,
it isn't for the wins or anything like that,
which you know, so much of this job is, you know,
it's about the wins,
but what you get into it for
is for teaching young men lessons,
and that's what coaching is all about.
And this year taught us so many lessons.
It taught us how to have a voice.
It taught us how to fight for what we believed in.
It taught us compassion for those who have had a tough year
and so many lives that have been lost in COVID
and so many other things that happened
throughout the country.
And it also taught us to handle adversity, you know,
and that you may not know what's coming next.
And I think that these guys are gonna make great husbands,
great fathers, they're gonna do really well
in whatever they wanna do,
cause they learned to work through something.
And then it wasn't about them.
They didn't know what was coming next,
but they just kept working through it.
- With that in mind--
- So many lessons were learned,
but I think those were the biggest ones.
- With that in mind,
what do you think the alumni should feel
about this particular team?
And I'm not talking about wins-losses
and how the last game went or anything like that.
I'm just talking about everything you just articulated.
How do you think alumni of Ohio State should feel
about that 2020 team?
- Well, I don't wanna be overdramatic or overstated,
but what these kids went through,
people lost lives, people...
I mean, there was so many things that happened this year.
So again, I don't wanna overstate it,
but the sacrifice that these guys made was unbelievable.
You know, they didn't see their family really
since the summer.
You know, they were just, literally,
they'd go home and they'd sit in their room
and then they would stay in their room all day
and in Zoom and do their classes.
And then they come back to the Woody
and it would be really segregated
and weren't allowed to do anything.
And the social distancing and all those things.
It was just so many sacrifices along the way.
And then we still weren't guaranteed anything
and still had games taken away
and their emotions were up and down
and it took a toll on them.
And I think the thing they missed the most
was not having the fans there
and feeling that a reward for playing well.
And that's one of the reasons why they play.
So I just think for,
I know I thank them all the time during the season that man,
I just really appreciate everything that they sacrificed
to have this happen and have this season happen when,
you know, they didn't have to fight for it.
You know, they didn't sign up for this,
but they did it
and I think they really appreciate Buckeye Nation
and the alumni and all the people that support them.
- What was it like for your family
and other coaches' families,
and everybody in the program, really?
'Cause you think only the team,
you don't even think of them,
sometimes they're players and coaches, you don't even,
it almost like dehumanizes it,
but what was it like for the families
and everybody involved?
- Yeah, I'll give you the real answer there.
I mean, the real answer was you know,
after Thanksgiving my family was in tough shape.
You know, I know that my wife
and kids were really looking at each other, like,
what are we doing?
It had been, I think,
eight weeks since I had really been around them.
I was not staying at home.
I was afraid that once my kids went to school,
that they were gonna get COVID
and then they were gonna give it to me.
And I was very, very nervous about that.
When I did get COVID, I felt ashamed, I felt embarrassed.
That was tough because, you know,
there's so much responsibility to be the head coach
at Ohio State and everything that was going on.
I just didn't wanna have that happen.
So every time we took that test and you put it in your nose,
I was holding my breath to find out what the answer was.
And, but I'll say this once I did have it
and I got back reunited with the family.
I had to isolate for 10 days.
But I was with the family
and it kind of reunited us a little bit.
And from then on, we were strong, you know, it was good.
And we found a way to push through it this season
and kind of come back together as a family.
But up until then, it was hard.
- What do you think it meant to the team
and also the entire Ohio State community
just the fact that you even played a season?
- Yeah, most people don't really have any idea
what really happened and what went on to get to this point.
So many people are to thank our players first off, you know,
Justin Fields, Jonathan Cooper,
and so many people who fought, they had a voice.
You know, we had parents who were just trying to figure out
ways to get involved.
And nobody said that we wanted to be reckless.
We wanted to make sure that we played safely
and we saw some programs doing that.
And we wanted to have that opportunity.
And so president Johnson, Jean Smith,
and Dr. Borchers had huge parts in this
and they really championed this thing.
And then work with The Big Ten Conference to get it done.
But just to do that was amazing.
And I think if we hadn't played a season,
we would have been so much further behind
some of these other conferences who played it.
It may have cost us two to three years to get back
to where we need to be.
And so because of some great leadership,
we were able to ride the ship,
and find a way to play safely.
- You mentioned President Johnson,
you got an early introduction to her.
She comes in and midstream of all this,
and she's an ex-athlete or soft college athlete.
What do you feel about the leadership she's shown
at this point and what her support meant for the players
and for sports in general?
- Yeah, I mean, she was in the Woody
and talked to our team two different times.
You know, once when everything was going down
and then the second time
after we won The Big Ten Championship, you know,
on the way to Clemson.
And she's been unbelievable, her
and Veronica have been very, very supportive to us.
The communication to me has been excellent.
I think she really cares about football
and that she got put into a tough situation
before her feet were even in the ground.
She was already in the middle of it.
And you know, again, a great show of leadership
and if this is any kind of window into,
what's gonna be coming down the road
in terms of her leadership,
we're gonna be in great hands, moving forward.
One more real quick one about the season,
but then we'll have a couple about the future.
There's so many up and down moments of just play,
not play like you mentioned,
you didn't get to play the Michigan game,
and yet you still win The Big Ten
and then you have the dramatic one over Clemson,
those are the highlights and in particular,
the Clemson game, what it meant for the players
and for Ohio State is that's been kind of a bugaboo
for the fan base and alumnus.
- Yeah, first off,
it's the team up North tide we can't say the N-word.
So just to make otherwise, if you come into Woody,
we have to make you do 10 up-downs.
(indistinct)
(Todd and Day laughing)
The guys really yeah, really missed out on that.
That's something that we work every day
and it's something we always think about that rivalry,
you know, we can't get anywhere if we don't beat them.
And so to not be able to play that game,
not get the gold pants, that was a shame.
But yeah, you know, we just kept pushing forward.
That was kind of the way it was.
We knew that game wasn't gonna happen,
but then you know,
The Big Ten allowed us to go play
in that Big Ten championship game, which was huge.
So the focus quickly went to that.
That was a tough week.
We lost Chris Alavi, we lost Jackson Smith.
We lost a whole bunch of guys,
I think, five or six starters a couple of days
before that game.
And that was good Northwestern team.
They were solid.
And so didn't play great on offense,
but played really good on defense.
And that was a big win for us
to win our fourth straight Big Ten championship,
which you know,
for some people I think they take for granted,
it's not easy. (chuckles)
And so to win that, we enjoyed that.
And that was one of our goals.
And then to get all the things that happened to get back,
to play Clemson again, with all the stuff that happened,
we had an opportunity to go play them
and while the season didn't lead up to it,
the way that Clemson season led up to us,
we did two different ways to get there.
Two different protocols, two different everything
to play the way we did was amazing.
It was a magical night.
It was just one of those nights that we just had fun.
And the kids played with great energy.
They played hard, they played tough.
And for so many reasons we wanted to win that game.
You know, we know the history with Clemson and Ohio State
and certainly the game that we lost last year, you know,
I didn't really wanna talk about it much.
And a lot of the players didn't wanna talk about it,
but that one hurt.
And it sat with us for a long time.
And so to get that win was great.
And because of that,
I just think of all those great moments, you know,
it's hard because of the last game,
but, that Clemson game was unbelievable.
And I'm glad that our guys were able to enjoy that moment
when there was a time we weren't even playing.
- You mentioned Alabama game already, but you know,
and how much that did hurt,
but does that lead to a (indistinct) for next year
in terms of motivation?
What does the program take away from that night,
which obviously was not a good night for the Buckeyes,
but what do you take away with it going forward
because of that game?
- Yeah, well, I think it goes to show that first off
where we are, I mean,
we've been to the CFP now the last two years
and played really well last year, didn't win, came back won,
got to the national championship.
So at first it shows, you know,
kind of where there's things going and now into you know,
our coaching staff's third year.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the benchmark and that's good.
That's a good thing.
Not that we take for granted any game in our conference,
we have a good conference
and it's gonna be hard
to win the conference again next year,
but take it one game at a time and keep building,
but any kind of experience like that,
that you have for players who,
even if some, the guys didn't play in it,
they saw it, they felt it, they've gone through it.
It wasn't new.
And so now they have something to go back upon,
an experience to go back upon
if we can get back there next year.
- You mentioned Chris Alavi,
he's coming back, Garrett Haskett,
several players who could a left, decided to come back.
What do you think that says about Ohio State?
What it says about the culture of your program
and the fact that these guys can be leaders
now going forward?
- Yeah, I mean, like you said,
all of these guys could have gone out.
I mean, Chris Alavi you know, Haskett you know,
there's a whole bunch of 'em
and these guys (indistinct) Munford would have been,
a really solid draft pick early on.
But I think that two things,
one they want to become even more at Ohio State.
They wanna leave a legacy behind.
And I think they understand that this is a brotherhood
and they have a chance to be a leader
and be one of the Ohio State greats.
And they want that.
So that's one thing, they're not just chasing money.
And then two,
I think they know that another year of development
in our program with coach Mick,
another year of playing in our system
will allow them an opportunity to be better
and more prepared when they do go to the NFL.
- Obviously, you lose Justin Fields.
It's gonna be a huge question mark.
And every season brings question marks,
but Justin was such a talented player.
What kind of, as you head towards the spring now,
first of all, do you even know
if there's gonna be a spring game? (laughs)
And, just your thoughts about the things
that you have to replace moving forward,
starting with Justin, just in general.
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, every year is like this, you know?
I mean, when we had to replace JT
and we had to replace Dwayne
and now we've got to replace Justin.
So it's hard because you wish you had these guys
for a full four years like we used to have 'em,
but nowadays they have these opportunities that they really,
you know, it's hard for them to pass up.
So you know, we're gonna go about the business
of finding a new quarterback
and the good news is that he'll be young.
So we'll have him for a few years
and we'll let these guys compete.
You know, who knows how it's gonna shake, you know?
The guy that may be ahead early on you know,
gets replaced halfway through the season who knows
maybe somebody wins it and takes off and runs.
And he's the starter for the next three years.
And you just don't know with quarterbacks,
what it's gonna look like.
And, but that's like that in so many other positions.
You know, we're losing four linebackers
who really had a huge impact on this program.
And so every year you have to kind of retool
and regroup and new guys step up,
but that's why recruiting is so important.
And guys know that when they come here.
- Couple more and we'll wrap it up.
You know, it was such an odd year for so many
in so many aspects.
Did it, in some ways even teach you anything
about the passion and support of Ohio State, the alumnus,
everybody who follows this program,
did it teacher you anything you didn't already know,
or maybe give you a different appreciation for it,
even though the fans were not at the games?
- Well, I think the biggest thing
is that we just missed that.
You know, that that's a huge part of,
I think, why these guys love playing here so much,
is that support.
And there was a void there this year,
I mean, a major, major void for our players.
And they just didn't feel that feedback
that they typically would,
they didn't have that opportunity.
And so, yeah, I think there's a huge part in there
that we just can't wait to get the fans back in the stands
and they can feel that support because there was a time,
you know, I got to tell you most of the season
where they didn't feel that at all, you know,
they didn't have that support that they typically have
and not that obviously there was a lot of support
in terms of watching the games and pulling for them,
but the kids never felt that, they didn't see it.
And so yeah, I think it made us appreciate it more and more
when something is taken away like that
and looking forward to get everybody back in the shoe
and having some fun.
- Well, it's gonna be great when you get reunited
with everybody back in the (indistinct)
and that's hopefully this September.
I have one final question
and it's a little bit of an oddball one
because we're asking all the different alumnus
and people that we interview this question
for a project we're working on, but the Ohio State,
the university motto is education for citizenship.
And I wanted to know what the word citizenship means to you,
especially in the time that we are in now,
what does it mean to be a good citizen?
- I think the first thing is compassion.
And I think that you know,
if you're a citizen who has compassion for others
and I think now more than ever is willing to listen.
I think one of the issues we have right now
throughout America is just that
people aren't listening enough.
You know, they have their opinions and that's great.
But I think we need to listen to each other
and concede points
and understand different people's points of view.
And with that comes compassion.
And I think when you can see things
through other people's perspective,
you can find common ground.
And I think that's really, really important.
So I think when you talk about citizenship,
that's what I think about right now.
- Coach Day, the Alumni Association,
all alumnus and fans throughout Ohio State's community,
appreciate your time.
And we wish you the best.
- All right, thanks, Todd.