Editor’s note: This article is part of the Program Builders series, focusing on the behind-the-scenes executives and people fueling the future growth of their sports.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Urban Meyer always had an idea that he would retire from college coaching at 55 years old. It kept him on the lookout for the successor as his time at Ohio State carried on.
If Meyer didn’t find someone who athletic director Gene Smith and university president Michael Drake could agree on to keep Ohio State winning at a high level with what he called “the best infrastructure in college football,” he would push back his retirement.
But then along came Ryan Day.
“I didn’t realize until he was on staff how great he was,” said Meyer, who originally hired Day as a graduate assistant at Florida 12 years before he brought him to Ohio State as offensive coordinator in 2017.
Now, six seasons after succeeding Meyer, Day has a 70-10 record. Last January, he became the fifth Ohio State coach to win a national championship, doing so amid intense scrutiny following a fourth consecutive loss to Michigan. Afterward, he stood on the stage in Atlanta with a big smile on his face, surrounded by his family and a group of players who made up his first full recruiting class.
“It makes it all that much more enjoyable when you go through tough times and you stick together when it gets a little dicey,” Day said.
Of course, the dicey times have been few and far between in Columbus.
Ohio State made its 1,000th appearance in the AP poll this week, 72 more than any other team dating to 1936. Since Woody Hayes took over in 1951, it has had just four losing seasons out of 74, the fewest in the FBS. And after some modest lulls by Ohio State standards in the 1980s and ’90s, the consistent winning has been taken to another level in the 21st century with national championships won by three consecutive head coaches.
The Buckeyes have done it all through a period of immense change in college football in which the pressure to win never ceases.
“Mack Brown once said to me, ‘I have good news and bad news. Good news is you won a national championship. Bad news is you won a national championship,’” Meyer said. “Now everything is, ‘Why didn’t you win it this year?’”
If any team is equipped to handle that pressure, it’s Ohio State, where the high standard of success, statewide enthusiasm, institutional alignment, clear identities and coaching adaptability have combined to build a program that rarely stumbles.
What has made Ohio State the most consistent winner in college football? We asked the people who brought the Buckeyes here.
A winning foundation: ‘You can’t let them down’
Every day during preseason camp, James Laurinaitis gathers his players and briefs them on another Ohio State All-American linebacker.
Laurinaitis, an All-American himself, now coaches the unit for the Buckeyes. He gives the history lessons so players gain a greater appreciation for those who came before them.
“You’re upholding a tradition and a standard of guys who played the game the right way, played fast and violent,” Laurinaitis said. “That’s what makes Buckeye Nation so special is that the former players watch and they’re vocal, so you got to make them proud with what they see on film.”
That standard is a driving force for everybody in Ohio State’s athletic department dating to the days of Hayes, who won five national championships in his 28 years and lost more than three games just four times.
Most-ranked teams since 1951
82.5%
60.5%
4
75.8%
53.1%
7
73.5%
53.6%
10
73.3%
43.2%
11
69.1%
44.3%
11
67.3%
40.9%
9
64.3%
39.4%
12
62.4%
45.2%
18
61.2%
37.1%
6
57.8%
32.6%
13
AP poll data via College Poll Archive; losing seasons via Stathead
At Ohio State, mediocre seasons never spiral to rock bottom. Losses never turn into prolonged periods of losing like the dry spells that have befallen every other blue-blood program, from Oklahoma in the 1990s to Alabama in the 2000s to Michigan and Texas in the 2010s. Even Ohio State’s relative down years of the 1980s and ’90s included high peaks.
“Ohio State has extremely high expectations, and it’s kind of changed even since Jim Tressel took over,” Meyer said. “It’s been not just high expectations, but almost unfair expectations, but in turn they give you the most incredible support that exists.”
Tressel breathed life into a program that was struggling for championship-level success under former coach John Cooper (who still finished No. 2 twice, in 1996 and ’98). He made the leap from Youngstown State in the FCS, beat Michigan right away in 2001 and then won a national championship in 2002, the program’s first since 1970. Ohio State has finished in the top 10 in 20 of 23 seasons since then, giving it a case for best program of the 21st century so far.
“I’m in my 40s and there’s not a day that goes by when somebody isn’t thanking me or telling me how much they appreciate me, best-night-of-their-life type thing,” said Dustin Fox, an ESPN analyst who played cornerback on the 2002 team.
Meyer has seen firsthand what separates Ohio State’s statewide interest. Before he won a national championship at Ohio State, Meyer won two at Florida. After one of those, he went on stage at a Jimmy Buffett concert in Tampa, just a couple of hours from Gainesville.
He was greeted with boos.
“You do that in Ohio, they’ll take the roof down because they are all Buckeyes,” Meyer said.
The Gators don’t have a monopoly on fan interest in Florida; there were Miami and Florida State fans in attendance, among others in a transient state. Few, if any, schools can duplicate the combination of school pride, enthusiasm for football and dominant fan interest in a populous state (seventh in the U.S.) that Ohio State has.
Ohio State has won at least 10 games in 19 of the past 20 seasons. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
Pro teams in Cincinnati and Cleveland may divide Ohio, but in college, there’s no doubt the Buckeyes are the unifier. Although Cincinnati joined the Big 12 in 2023, its support is narrow. The Buckeyes have the heart of all corners of Ohio. When Ohio Stadium was originally built in 1919, all 88 counties in Ohio chipped in.
“I think it’s just something about the setting in Ohio that just lends itself to alignment and long-term success,” athletic director Ross Bjork said.
Ohio State has long been one of the most valuable brands in the sport, and it’s one of the most popular teams. The personal and financial investment of fans in the program puts it in an advantageous position.
“There’s been an expectation and a tradition that’s been handed down year after year,” Day said. “I think the players that come into the program are very talented and understand what the expectations are and so they come here to be the best, and that’s been going on for a long time.”
But it’s also motivation for those within the program.
“It eases your mind, because you don’t have to generate interest in the program, but the negative is you can’t have a down year,” Meyer said. “That’s the way my mind was. I wasn’t out speaking around Ohio to encourage people to check us out, but I also had a deep understanding to the point where it gets unhealthy sometimes.
“It occupies your mind: You can’t let them down.”
University alignment: ‘Hope is not a strategy’
Hiring Meyer after Tressel’s ouster was an easy decision by Gene Smith, but getting through the first week of his tenure wasn’t.
Because of the infamous Tattoo-gate scandal, the NCAA took nine scholarships from Ohio State and hit it with a bowl ban. It came with another clause, too: Seniors could transfer without punishment.
“That was the one time that the country was like, ‘OK we finally got them,’” Meyer said.
Meyer held a meeting with the team he’d been leading for one week. His message was simple: “Stay here. Hang in here.”
Nobody transferred. Ohio State went from 12-1 in Tressel’s final season to 6-7 under interim coach Luke Fickell in 2011 to 12-0 in 2012 under Meyer.
“They came back and fought their ass off,” Meyer said. “I always liked that team. That was the time there could’ve been the dip, but they wouldn’t let us have it.”
Ohio State hasn’t been squeaky clean since then. In 2018, both Meyer and Smith were suspended by the board of trustees after an investigation found they mishandled allegations of spousal abuse against assistant coach Zach Smith. One violation is enough to take some programs down for a few years, but after the suspensions — including Day’s three-game trial run replacing Meyer as acting coach — Ohio State went 13-1 with the lone loss coming in an upset at Purdue.
The Buckeyes were back in the College Football Playoff the next year under Day.
Smith, who was the athletic director through both scenarios, credited Ohio State’s alignment with getting through both periods of scandal without a permanent dip in performance.
“I was fortunate to have trustees who got it,” Smith said. “I had conversations with many of them, sometimes collectively, about certain things that had to be done during those times and they never wavered.”
Ohio State had a 106-22 record in Jim Tressel’s 10 seasons. (David Maxwell / Getty Images)
Ohio State has had three full-time head coaches, three athletic directors and six university presidents this century. Whether it was Tressel with Andy Geiger, Smith with Meyer and Day or even now Bjork with Day, the relationship between the head coach and athletic director has been crucial to navigating adversity and change in the sport.
Smith was known for showing up at Day’s office each Friday morning to chat. Sometimes the conversations would be light about family or the upcoming game. Other times they were serious. The two had constant conversations about NIL, the transfer portal, the board of trustees and even the expectations at Ohio State.
For instance, there was a time when a vocal portion of Ohio State’s fan base was upset about the Buckeyes not covering point spreads or winning big enough.
“We were like, ‘We can’t worry about that, we got the win,’” Smith said. “We would have conversations about that, alignment and the pressure of the game.”
There’s a balance between an athletic director overstepping into a program but also keeping enough contact to make sure everybody is on the same page about the future. Ohio State found that. After it watched Michigan win the national title in 2023, Smith, Day and donors got better aligned on the NIL front, helping Ohio State to win the offseason by retaining and adding top-tier talent before going on its own championship run.
Smith, who played football at Notre Dame from 1973-77, subsequently had a message for the trustees when he retired last year: Never let football falter.
“I gave them a speech about what needed to be done, that alignment was so critical,” Smith said. “It’s about transparency. It’s talking to the coaches and players and talking to the right people. You have to have a plan — and hope is not a strategy.”
Adapting to the times: ‘Change is inevitable’
Fox is a Canton native who has a long family legacy at Ohio State.
He has two uncles who were on the 1968 national title team, and he was ready to continue that when he was a high school recruit. Then, Cooper was fired.
Fox, whose brother, Derek Fox, went to Penn State, thought about flipping until he turned on the TV and saw Tressel, addressing a basketball arena full of Ohio State fans, saying that he couldn’t wait to go beat Michigan.
Moments after Tressel left the court, Fox’s phone rang. It was the Buckeyes’ new coach.
“He told me he wanted me to be his No. 1 recruit in his first class,” Fox said.
Tressel put together a recruiting class of 17 players in 2001 and Fox was one of 10 Ohio natives in it. Tressel is an Ohio native himself. He wanted to close Ohio off to the rest of the country.
“If you looked at some of the great programs, they had sprinkles of Ohio guys,” Tressel said. “So that became a focal point for us.”
The strategy worked. Ohio State won at least 10 games in eight of Tressel’s 10 seasons, with at least a share of six Big Ten championships.
Most-ranked teams since 2000
92.7%
75.5%
273
88.8%
57.8%
261
82.8%
56.6%
259
80.6%
41.3%
242
76.5%
65.8%
261
74.0%
44.4%
237
71.4%
31.1%
216
68.9%
37.6%
214
68.7%
41.7%
226
65.0%
36.9%
223
AP poll data via College Poll Archive; total wins via Stathead
Getting the most out of Ohio talent was a strength of Tressel’s, but Meyer, an Ohio native too, brought in a different mentality that proved prophetic for the transition to the Playoff era, in which the sport has evolved from regional to national and population trends have placed a greater concentration of high school talent in the South.
When he arrived, the SEC was dominating college football, winning seven consecutive national titles (including two against Tressel’s Buckeyes). It was obvious to Meyer the Big Ten was lagging behind. So he went to his assistant coaches and told them, “I need you to go recruit the best five players at your position, no matter where they are from.”
Meyer mixed what Tressel did in Ohio with his national philosophy. It took off quickly, and the wins piled up again, including a national title in the first year of the four-team Playoff in 2014 to end the SEC’s title streak.
“We started going into those power states of Georgia, Texas and Florida and beating the flagship schools,” Meyer said. “I don’t know if that’s ever happened.”
Urban Meyer went 83-9 in seven years at Ohio State. (Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
Under Meyer and Day, 11 of 13 Ohio State recruiting classes have finished in the top five of the 247Sports Composite team rankings.
Day’s football mind has never been at question. It’s his personality that has made a difference in the era of the transfer portal and NIL. Smith felt like the team needed somebody who could relate with the players and their parents, and Day has proven him right.
“Change is inevitable, but you have to have somebody who can manage change, whatever it is,” Smith said. “His personality was perfect for what we were going through. … I needed somebody who knew how to relate to parents and players and, frankly, how to relate to donors.”
Building an identity: ‘You have to find your own voice’
Photos of Jeremiah Smith’s third-and-11 catch against Notre Dame that sealed Ohio State’s ninth championship have been sold since January. But there’s a black-and-white one, shot from the end zone facing Smith as he turned around for the ball, that has become especially popular.
Above Smith’s head is an Ohio State fan standing up with his hands in the air signaling for a touchdown because he thought Smith was going to score. It’s former offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson.
He was sitting next to Gee Scott Sr., the father of tight end Gee Scott Jr., a player Wilson coached while he was the tight ends coach and offensive coordinator from 2017-22. Knowing Day well, Wilson turned to Scott before the play and said, “They’re going to throw this.”
Two minutes later, Ohio State was celebrating inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Wilson was one of many familiar faces in the building watching as Day hoisted the championship trophy. Meyer, Tressel and Smith were all there too to watch Day put his own stamp on the program’s championship tradition.
Coaches like Hayes and Tressel were known for physical, conservative approaches. Day is a quarterback guru with years of NFL experience. While he knows recruiting is important, he loves getting into the weeds of dissecting film and figuring out how he can get an edge each game. With that came an emphasis on the passing game and building what is now consistently one of the deepest quarterback and wide receiver position groups in the country.
The key for every coach to have success is leaning on their strengths without forgetting the culture that was set before them.
“The positives are that there was a structure in place here, but the negative was that there was already a structure in place,” Day said. “You have to find your own voice, and that can be tricky because you want to continue all the things that have been successful, but also make it yours.”
For years, Day fell just short of his championship moment, losing to eventual champion Georgia by a field goal in 2022, losing in the 2020 championship to Alabama and losing in a heartbreaking 2019 semifinal against Clemson. But finally, on Jan. 20, 2025, he got it done, responding to the pressure of losing to Michigan by winning four consecutive games against top-10 teams by double digits.
Still, although his legacy has been bolstered by winning the first 12-team CFP, little changes for Day now. When kickoff arrives on Aug. 30 against No. 1 Texas, the expectations will be the same: double-digit wins, beat Michigan, win the Big Ten and go on a Playoff run.
To maintain their status as the most recession-proof program in college football, the Buckeyes continue to look forward, not back.
“We have to make sure that we’re looking ahead in the next five to 10 years,” Day said, “to figure out what is the formula at Ohio State that keeps us a leader in college football.”
(Top photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
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