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Ohio State AD shuts the door on rumors regarding Ryan Day’s ‘coach in waiting’ status
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Late Saturday evening, reports surfaced that Ohio State was in conversations with offensive coordinator Ryan Day to potentially make him the program’s coach-in-waiting.
After the Buckeyes’ emphatic 49-6 win over Tulane yesterday, Ari Wasserman of The Athletic reported that sources close to the situation told him the school was working on arrangements to have Day take over as the head coach of the program whenever Urban Meyer departs in the future.
Athletic director Gene Smith responded to the report this morning with a rather straightforward answer:
We obviously are appreciative of Coach Day’s great work, and hope he continues to be one of our offensive coordinators for a long time, but we are more than confident Coach Meyer will be our head coach for quite some time.
Thank you
— Gene Smith (@OSU_AD) September 23, 2018
Day doesn’t bring any head coaching experience to the table, but did serve as Ohio State’s interim leader while Meyer was suspended through the first three games of the season. The Buckeyes cruised to a 3-0 record, defeating Oregon State (77-31), Rutgers (52-3), and then-No. 15 TCU (40-28) during that stretch.
With Meyer back on the sideline, Ohio State jumped out to a 42-6 halftime lead against Tulane before winning 49-6 to improve to 4-0. The Buckeyes are set to play Penn State (4-0) in a night game at Happy Valley next Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET in front of a College GameDay crowd.
Tyler has covered college football on a freelance basis since 2010. In addition to Saturday Football, his work has been featured on ESPN Radio, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, Cox Media Group, Athlon Sports, and more.