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When the Ohio State football team went up 31-7 in the third quarter of the national championship game, it looked like the game was over. Ryan Day and his Buckeyes were going to easily cruise to the national championship. However, that didn't end up being the case. Notre Dame scored 16 points to make it a one-score game, and Ohio State found themselves needing to convert a third and 12 late in the game to avoid giving the Fighting Irish the ball with a chance to win. Enter Jeremiah Smith.
Ohio State could've played it safe and ran the ball to force a Notre Dame timeout, but it was the national championship. Ryan Day wanted to end it, so the Buckeyes went with a deep ball to freshman Jeremiah Smith. It worked.
“I just thought to myself, only one national championship, you only get one opportunity a year to do this, let’s just lay it on the line and put it out there and be aggressive,” Day said, according to an article from The Athletic.‘
Day has been through a lot since taking over as the head coach of the Ohio State football team. He has faced a lot of criticism because of his problems beating Michigan, but he is now a national champion.
“He’s the tip of the spear,” Left tackle Donovan Jackson said of Day. “He wants to win more than anyone in that locker room. So seeing Coach Day hoist up that trophy, man, seeing all the flak he’s got, all the — excuse my language — s**t he’s gotten, is just amazing as a player to see our coach in the position that we know he should be.”
Day's players love him, and they all wanted to win this championship for him after the disastrous loss to the Wolverines.
“To see him have the success, makes me so happy,” Sawyer said of Day. “I saw the smile his wife had on her face and stuff that she had to go through. Being in Columbus after losing that game four years in a row, it’s terrible, and to come out tonight and win this game for them, it’s awesome.”
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Ohio State didn't solve the Michigan problem this year, but this new College Football Playoff format gave them a second chance. In the four-team playoff era, the season would've been over after that loss. The Buckeyes still got a chance, and they took full advantage.
“Look, our program is never going to be defined by another program. Never,” Athletic Director Ross Bjork said. “That doesn’t mean anything about de-emphasizing (the rivalry). We will never be defined by somebody else. We take the lead. That’s what we did in this run. So we’re not going to let others define who we are, what we stand for.”
Losing at home as 20-point favorites when you needed a win was tough for this Ohio State team to swallow, but Ryan Day kept the Buckeyes going.
“It wasn’t like at the end of the year we were broken,” Day said. “It wasn’t that way. We had an awful day, and we just said we could never do that again.”
Maybe Ohio State will solve the Michigan problem next year, but right now, that isn't on the mind of Day and his team.
