Ryan Day will lead a team out of the tunnel for the first time in his career on Saturday. When he does, Ohio State’s acting head coach will have a lot on his plate.
Day will still be working as the Buckeyes’ quarterbacks coach, and primary play-caller, as well as filling Urban Meyer’s role.
Luckily, Day has a couple former college head coaches on staff who he can look to for guidance.
Offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson was the head coach at Indiana from 2011-2016. Defensive coordinator Greg Schiano was the coach at Rutgers from 2001-2011.
Both of them know that Day won’t be able to do it all by himself Saturday.
Schiano learned about the importance of delegating during his first game as Rutgers’ head coach.
His Scarlet Knights opened up the 2001 season on the road.
“We were at the University of Buffalo, which was a monster crowd as you can imagine, right? Rutgers, Buffalo,” Schiano said.
Regardless of crowd size, Schiano was still pumped up to finally have his own program. In fact, he was so fired up that he had forgotten a few important things.
“I’m so excited to go coach the game and I’m going to lead the team on to the field and I’m standing in the tunnel waiting for them to say go ahead and I had noticed that I don’t have my call sheet or my game plan with me,” he said.
“So now an experienced head coach would call the assistant over and say, hey, do me a favor, go get the game plan in the locker room,” Schiano said. “But not having that experience what did I do? I worked my way through the crowd, through the players, got it, sprinted up and just as I got back we were able to take the field on time.”
Schiano and Rutgers won that game, 31-15, in front of an announced crowd of 22,658.
Saturday, Day will coach his first game in front of a crowd nearly five times that big. The pressure on him will be exponentially greater.
But if he forgets something coming out of the locker room, hopefully Day will learn from Schiano’s mistake and let someone else go get it.
