The Ohio State football team has won the national championship less than two months after much of the fan base was calling for head coach Ryan Day to be fired. When the Buckeyes lost to Michigan earlier in the season as home as 20-point favorites, a lot of fans gave up on Day, but on Monday night in Atlanta, he gave them a reason to believe. He might be winless against Michigan in his past four tries, but Ohio State just won the national title.

As the head coach of the Ohio State football team, you are told from day one that beating Michigan is the top priority. Ryan Day hasn't been able to do that since 2019, but he did just win a national championship. ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit knows what Day has been through because of those losses.

“I hear the stories behind the curtain, I know what he and his wife and his family go through,” Herbstreit said during Monday's game. “It's really, it's tough. It's tough to be a coach at a premium school where you're expected to win every game. He handled it with such class. And he gets on top of the mountain.”

Ohio State fans definitely want to get that win over Michigan, but a win in the national championship definitely softens the blow of that defeat. At the end of the day, Day has been incredible against every team in his career except Michigan. Now that the College Football Playoff has expanded to 12, he doesn't even need to beat the Wolverines to get to the top. That is what this year proved. Obviously that is still a major goal for the program, but they suffered maybe their worst loss to Michigan in program history this year and won it all.

In the previous four-team era, that loss to Michigan would've been it for Ohio State. They would've been done, and who knows what the narrative would've been regarding Day. Instead, the Buckeyes got another chance after an underwhelming two-loss regular season, and they ended up winning a national championship despite finishing in fourth place in the Big Ten. Buckeyes fans are definitely feeling better about Day.