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Ryan Day, Ohio State coaches show support for parent letter to B1G

Dustin Schutte

By Dustin Schutte

Published:

The parents of Ohio State football players are receiving full support from the Buckeye coaching staff after drafting a letter to send to B1G commissioner Kevin Warren this week. OSU parents are one of four groups that have written up a message for the league office, along with Iowa, Nebraska and Penn State.

Ohio State’s staff, including head coach Ryan Day, defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs, running backs coach Tony Alford and others took to Twitter on Saturday to back the letter shared by the parents of Buckeye football players. The group has been very vocal about their comfort level regarding playing football during the fall, despite the risks of playing during a pandemic.

Many have stated that Ohio State has done everything right, and they believe health and safety of players has been a top priority within the program.

Still, that wasn’t enough to influence a decision in the B1G office. On Tuesday, the conference became the first Power 5 league to back out of a fall sports season, hoping to push everything to the spring. Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, incoming president Kristina Johnson and Day were all aligned on a potential delay to the start of the season this fall, rather than a cancellation.

Parents have voiced frustrations over the lack of communication and leadership from the B1G over the last week. Primarily, there’s a sense of disappointment with the conference putting out a schedule (revised, conference-only), only to nix the season entirely less than one week later.

Despite a push to play from players, coaches and parents, the B1G voted to postpone the fall season. Warren didn’t have many answers when he spoke on BTN on the day a final decision was made, only increasing the level of frustration.

Now, we’ve seen four parent groups send letters to the league office. We’ll see if that prompts the commissioner and the presidents to finally provide some answers.

Dustin Schutte

Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB