THE MAN ON THE HOT SEAT, RYAN DAY, BECOMES THE HOTTEST MAN IN THE PLAYOFF

Nothing makes sense in college football, as Ohio State shows the regular season doesn’t matter in a glorious postseason — while Day finally succeeds with $20 million in NIL money in an Oregon blowout

Whatever is happening in college football, don’t stop at abnormal. It’s insane and inane and anything else you choose. The regular seasons don’t matter. Coaches are threatening opponents for transfer-tampering with players. As for Nick Saban and Kirk Herbstreit, they might be right in their intense support of Ryan Day, which isn’t their professional duty.

Somehow, Ohio State appears to be a brand new team in the postseason and providing an implausible pattern of success. Day has forgotten when he almost spilled tears after a crash landing to five-loss Michigan, which was 4 1/2 weeks ago. Never mind millions of diehards who demanded he be fired, including NFL star Maxx Crosby. A coach named Day had no nightfall, with vague death threats.

Today, he is the favorite to win the national championship.

From hot seat to the hottest man in the Playoff.

Before anyone could look up at the Rose Bowl and wonder why Dan Lanning and Dillon Gabriel were AWOL, the Buckeyes were leading 34-0 against Oregon, the country’s No. 1 team. Quarterback Will Howard, who slid and lost a game months ago in Eugene, had three long scoring passes in less than 20 minutes. Two were to the brilliant Jeremiah Smith, who had said Monday, “I’m just laughing in my head. Why are y'all really playing man-on-man against us, or against me, I should say? We're going to take a shot down the field. So I'm just letting everybody know right now that we're taking a shot.” TreVeyon Henderson ran 66 yards for a score, one of his two for the afternoon. Chip Kelly, the offensive coordinator who left a head coaching job at UCLA, was on fire.

At last, with a 41-21 victory, Day was thriving with a team that has received $20 million in NIL money. He was overhauling a 13-0 bunch fed by Phil Knight. Next is Texas, which barely overcame Arizona State. Will anyone stop Day and the Buckeyes, which is what Saban and Herbstreit said last week with expletive-filled anger?

“You can see the potential of where we're at, when we play in all three phases the way we did,” Day said Wednesday night. “It's a brand new start. I’m proud of the resilience of these guys. Still got a lot of football ahead of us. When you surround yourself with great people, with great character, you find yourself working through difficult times. At the end of the day, we wanted to win a national championship, and the way that we got here wasn't what we expected. It wasn't what we planned for. But, nonetheless, we had an opportunity to come back.”

“I think nobody has gone through more scrutiny than probably the team here,” receiver Emeka Egbuka said. “Five weeks ago, you know, people on the scene getting death threats, our head coach getting cussed out, people saying he should never come to Ohio again, all that type of stuff. And I’m sure by the end of the day, when you scroll Twitter, Instagram, everyone will be singing our praises. We just know what to say true to in our building.”

Death threats, he mentioned.

And Oregon? “We didn’t adjust fast enough,” Lanning said. “We really didn’t have the ability to stop them, and we didn’t have an ability to get something going for us on offense. We haven’t faced a lot of moments like this all year. They are an unbelievable team.”

“It was definitely shocking. They came out and punched us in the mouth. We tried to make adjustments, but it was definitely different,” defensive back Kobe Savage said. “Every time we had bad eyes or miscommunication they capitalized on those moments.”

Eight times, Gabriel was sacked. He had no chance. “You plan to create explosives, be really good on situational football and move the chains that way. We just didn’t do that on third down,” he said. “They had a great plan, like coach said. But if you don’t go get the third, you can’t move forward.”

When peaking, Ohio State looks like an NFL team. Howard and safety Caleb Downs are among those who arrived last offseason. The house donors are rude and very crude and need to win their third national title this century. Without it, they will ride Day, who was recommended by Urban Meyer and continues to extract the transfer portal. "We've got a chip on our shoulder, and that chip ain't going away,” Smith said. “That's who we are. Can't give them any life, no reason to believe they can win. We knew there were no tomorrows for us when we came into this playoff. We got a second chance, and you see what we're doing with it.”

The biggest find is Howard, a replacement for Kyle McCord, who transferred and had a great season at Syracuse. That was a gamble for Day. It wasn’t working against Michigan. “It was hard. I'm not going to lie. It sucked,” Howard said. “It was terrible for all of us. Terrible loss. But man, we can't let that beat us twice. We can’t.”

They haven’t. “They brought the fight, and we got hit in the mouth,” Oregon receiver Tez Johnson said. “They won the game from the first snap.”

Scouring the landscape for transfers will raise eyebrows about loyalty and greed at Ohio State. Yet across the country, Gabriel is among the biggest transfer properties, playing in his third program at 24. HIs title dream ended. “A lot of people are mad that they weren't able to play to a certain age,” said Gabriel, who was allowed two extra years because of COVID-19 and a redshirt season. “The older the player you are, I think at a certain point you gotta ask yourself, if you've got the biggest interview of your life, and someone said, ‘Hey, you can have six years to study or three years,’ I think anyone would say six.”

Six is too long when Day trots out Smith and Henderson. At least Rose Bowl fans found meaning, if not a close score, in their ticket prices. They needed about $200 to enter the stadium when Penn State-Boise State and Texas-Arizona State were in the $40 range. So far, discriminating buyers are the smart ones. We’ve had one great game, with Texas beating Arizona State in double overtime. Otherwise, victories by Ohio State and Penn State were boring, as games were in the first round.

The next round should be precious. If Day wins it all, can we chill his chair? Or is that a permanent rite of passage in the 33rd NFL city, Columbus? “Coach Day is awesome,” athletic director Ross Bjork said. “He's great to work with. He totally gets it. He loves being a Buckeye. So we're going to support him at the highest level.”

The plan, at the moment, is working.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.