COLUMBUS — On the day Urban Meyer announced his retirement, the soon-to-be-former Buckeye head coach said with the pressure the early signing date has put on college football coaches that OSU’s new head coach Ryan Day better be in four states the next day recruiting future Buckeyes.
Four days later, Day was on a plane to New York to support sophomore quarterback Dwayne Haskins at the Heisman Trophy Ceremony. The next day, he made the drive to visit four-star linebacker commit Cade Stover in Lexington, Ohio.
Day went from the madness of Times Square in New York City to the cornfields of a rural Ohio town in one day, and that transition summed up what his last few weeks have been like.
“Saturday when we were in New York City, we were down in Times Square and there were people everywhere, thousands and thousands of people, and we were in the busiest place in all of the world,” Day said. “And the next morning we drove up to see Cade Stover and his family and I was on his farm with not a person to be seen, taking a picture with his pet pig Ronnie, and it was like the most extreme — New York City and then up on the farm taking a picture with a pig.”
“That’s been kind of my last two weeks,” Day said.
But as Meyer predicted, Day’s rush to catch up in the first 48 hours after being named head coach was just the beginning of what his month would look like.
“Every moment I had, I was on my phone trying to make calls,” Day said. “There was a lot of work to be done. Still a ton of work to be done. But in that period, trying to make up, I guess, for lost time, for lack of a better term, and it’s just been nonstop since then.”
Day described this entire month as having been a whirlwind and a blur. After hitting the road the day after the Big Ten Championship game, things didn’t slow down until Wednesday’s signing day.
“A ton of phone calls,” Day said. “I felt like I had two phones to my ear for the last two weeks.”
The focus in this time was not just on the Buckeye prospects he knew, however, but also the prospects he didn’t know — especially those on defense.
“Obviously any time something like this happens, you have to make sure you’re building relationships with the guys that you’ve recruited but also maybe some of the guys that you didn’t have your hands on, especially some guys on defense, getting to know their families, and then also reaching out to some of the guys on the team during this transition and getting to know their parents some more,” Day said.
Day’s new role as head coach came with a lot of changes, but the biggest difference as a recruiter was put to test in the month of December. What he really focused on during this time was much different than his role as an assistant coach where he is simply trying to deliver recruits.
“I think it was more of getting into the homes and telling them the vision of the program,” he said. “And getting to know them and giving my background and who I am as a person and having my family come in and meet recruits and having them meet my family and showing them pictures of who my kids are, and that’s really what it’s been like.”
Welcome to big time College Football head coaching, Ryan. I’m not so worried about you, but I can guarantee that family time is about to take a major hit. Being a family man with a wife and children is a 24 hour a day job. Adding the responsibility of becoming a head coach and all that entails on and off the field “adds” another 35 hours a day onto that 24 hour day. It’s not east stretching a normal 24 hour day into a 59 hour day.
Mr., or should I say, COACH Day………your hair is about to become several shades toward the early graying period!