Throughout the magical College Football Playoff run engineered by Ohio State last season, the singular motivating force was to avenge an inexplicable loss to Michigan and avenge the reputation of the Buckeyes’ wildly successful coach.
Flash forward a year, as all those Buckeyes fans streamed soundlessly into the Arlington night to drown their sorrows amid New Year’s Eve revelers, the question – posed tongue-in-cheek after each successive CFP victory last year – suddenly takes on an entirely different flavor…
Hey Ohio State, how do you like Ryan Day now?
Because for all the goodwill Day stockpiled by said quartet of Playoff dubs that culminated with a victory over Notre Dame to win the CFP national championship, one can’t help but to wonder if that was all a fluke – and that the Day-led Ohio State team we actually saw Wednesday night might just be a truer representation of the facts.
Why? Because 10th-seeded Miami walked up to big, bad Ohio State and straight-up punched the second-seeded Buckeyes in the mouth. We aren’t talking just some scoring jabs, either. More like a surgical display of power and gritty defense and timely offense that had the Day’s team sucking wind and ducking for cover for the full 60 minutes of the Cotton Bowl.
Where was the Ohio State team that was the consensus No. 1 all season long?
Where was the Ohio State team that, even after a wonky loss to Indiana in the Big Ten title game, entered the 2025-26 College Football Playoff as the favorite to hoist the trophy for the second straight season?
Where was the Ohio State team that was littered with future NFL first-rounders and potential Heisman winners?
The Buckeyes that ended up trudging off the AT&T Stadium turf while Miami celebrated its return to glory after a 23-year irrelevance walkabout looked nothing like the world-beaters the college football cognoscenti made them out to be. If anything, it was the Hurricanes – who were virtually forgotten about following an overtime loss at SMU on Nov. 1 and barely squeaked into the CFP field by their fingernails – proving themselves to be the team we should have been paying attention to all along.
And just like it was from the moment Ohio State coughed it up last season at home to the arch-rival Wolverines all the way to the moment it was handed the CFP trophy, the spotlight turned squarely to Day.
Sure, Day’s decision to call the offensive plays in the Cotton Bowl wasn’t an entirely new thing – as he had called the offense earlier in his head-coaching tenure in Columbus – but did that distract the head coach’s focus from the bigger picture?
The explanation leading up to the Cotton Bowl was that Day wanted to lighten the workload of offensive coordinator Brian Hartline, who was still with the Buckeyes even though he had accepted the head coaching job at USF. It also evolved from Ohio State’s struggles on offense against Indiana in the Big Ten title game, a confluence of events that nudged Day into taking over the play sheet.
That decision/ego play backfired against the Hurricanes, however, as Ohio State managed just 45 rushing yards against a stout Miami defensive front and also mustered just a 3-of-10 mark on third down. And while quarterback Julian Sayin passed for 287 yards, the nation’s most accurate quarterback also uncorked a pair of interceptions – including a devastating first-half pick-6 that swung momentum squarely to Miami’s sideline.
The object of the game, of course, is to score points. For all of Sayin’s production, the Buckeyes scored as many points in the first half Wednesday night as you did sitting on your couch watching the game. That would be zero, with the resulting 14-point halftime hole simply too much to overcome when an actual multi-dimensional team is on the other side of the football.
Listen, we aren’t insinuating that Day is a bum. No coach who has won 82 games in 94 tries deserves that ignominious title, and Day also doesn’t deserve any For Sale signs on his front lawn when the Buckeyes return to Columbus.
But Miami certainly de-pantsed Ohio State in such a fashion that there will be healthy criticism anytime Day feels the itch to pick up the play sheet again. And all the aura that Day garnered during last season’s CFP run completely rinsed away just as the calendar flipped from 2025 to 2026.
Hey Ohio State, how do you like Ryan Day now?
Hey Ohio State, how do you like Ryan Day now after that Cotton Bowl dud? Saturday Down South.
Hence then, the article about hey ohio state how do you like ryan day now after that cotton bowl dud was published today ( ) and is available on SATURDAY DOWN SOUTH ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Hey Ohio State, how do you like Ryan Day now after that Cotton Bowl dud? )
Also on site :