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Ryan Day calls out portal timeline, says OSU faced ‘open season’ on roster after national title
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Ryan Day might be riding high as the first title-winning head coach of the 12-team Playoff era. However, that doesn’t mean the leader of Ohio State is satisfied with the structure around college football.
On Friday, Day made his first media comments of the spring, and he was asked about what needs Ohio State might look to address via the transfer portal. Instead of focusing on those needs, most of Day’s comments centered around the complicated timing of the portal windows.
“One of the things for us that was tricky is that the portal was open and closed before our season was over. And that’s something we’ve got to take a hard look at with the rules,” said Ryan Day while acknowledging some will blame the coach for complaining. “And people will say ‘You guys just won the national championship, what are you complaining about?’ Well, it matters for this year’s team.”
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While that is one challenge, Day went on to describe how Ohio State and Notre Dame faced “open season” on their rosters after the national title game. With the portal closed, all eyes were on the Fighting Irish and the Buckeyes with players holding a 5-day window on whether to declare for the portal or not.
“That was a major challenge for us. As you can imagine, if you are trying to add someone in the portal but you’re still trying to finish your season out, how that can affect your current roster,” said Day. “The 2nd part of that is we get done with the season and Notre Dame and Ohio State are the only two teams with guys in the portal for that 5-day window and everybody else is closed and it’s open season on our players for 5 days.”
As for the best path forward, Day saw two main options: Move to one portal window (in the spring) or move back the game calendar.
“We gotta take a hard look at this to figure out what’s right,” said Day.
It might be easy for some to classify Day’s comments as mere complaints, but he is not the only head coach left frustrated by the current calendar. We’ll see how the sport continues to adjust and adapt the schedule moving forward.
Paul is a lifelong fan and student of all things college football. He has been covering college football since 2017 and the B1G since 2018.