THE RYAN DAY ERA IS OVER — WHILE MICHIGAN PLANTS FLAGS AND WE ARE STUNNED
Anyone who wants to decipher college football, feel free, as Ohio State was crushed and brawled at midfield when the Wolverines tried to plant a flag on a day of more upsets and more flag madness
Assess the punching, choking, brawling, bloodletting, spitting, screaming and mask-pulling. This would be the wretched end of Ohio State football with Ryan Day in charge. The inferno didn’t blaze until the meanest of horrors was over Saturday, when inferior Michigan spun the Horseshoe into a travesty and won 13-10. Suddenly, and shockingly, the Buckeyes were removed from legitimate national championship consideration and only responded when the Wolverines tried to plant a flag at midfield.
What we had was a wild melee that must have awakened Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes. Jim Harbaugh was laughing, too, as police entered the fray and shot pepper spray. One season after winning a national title with a 15-0 showpiece, Michigan shut down Ohio State’s hopes with Sherrone Moore on the sideline and multiple NCAA violations in place. Nothing could be worse than an “M” stuck in the Columbus turf. Defensive end Jack Sawyer took offense, and when the ugliness was finished, legions of fans began asking the interminable question of who will replace Day.
Urban Meyer? They still chant his name proudly as he sits in a Fox Sports set by the field. He didn’t enjoy the skirmish, but more importantly, he’d have made certain his team was ready for Michigan and prepared to play top-ranked Oregon in the Big Ten title game. Instead, we’ll watch No. 3 Penn State. The Buckeyes will slide in the rankings and barely make the 12-team national tournament, but anyone awaiting the demise of Day should ask why he was defending the riot. How?
“I know these guys are looking to put a flag on our field, and our guys weren’t going to let that happen. I’ll find out what happened, but it’s our field,” he said, adding nothing about a hospitalized police officer and Ohio State players receiving eye treatment for pepper spray. “There's some prideful guys on our team that aren't just going to sit back and watch that happen.”
Said Moore: “It was emotions on both sides. I did see they had the flag and guys were waving it around and their guys charged us. There's emotion on both sides. It can't happen. Rivalry games get heated, especially this one, it's the biggest one in the country, so we got to handle that one better.”
He’s right. Why did Day miss the point so badly? What will he do when he’s relieved of duties in a few weeks? He has lost too many big games. This is the finale, his fourth straight loss in the rivalry. “I’m still trying to digest everything that just happened,” he said. “(I have) a locker room full of guys who are just devastated. There are a lot of guys who are crushed right now. There is nothing you can say at this point. You have to take the ownership of that and it starts with me. As you know, it isn’t easy to accept. I have to take the ownership, and I am the one who makes the final decisions.”
A loss this mortifying can’t be explained when Ohio State has an NIL roster of $20 million. Already, former Buckeyes are demanding new coaches. Defensive back Tyreke Johnson wants Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss. “I knew coach Day was not the answer when we played in the national championship against Bama and at halftime he didn’t say a word to the team just went in the office and started to blame other coaches,” he said. “Who’s a better recruiter and offensive-minded coach than Lane Kiffin? He will bring multiple championships to the great state of Ohio.”
Maybe not, considering the Buckeyes won only once in the last 21 years and only twice since 1969. They are blessed with donors supplying ample amounts to players. Why did they shoot blanks? Why fire only when the flag was in play? Wrote the university police: “Following the game, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies assisted in breaking up an on-field altercation. During the scuffle, multiple officers representing Ohio and Michigan deployed pepper spray. OSUPD is the lead agency for games & will continue to investigate.”
Said Brian Steel, president of a a fraternal order of police: “Following an altercation between (Ohio State) and (Michigan) football players after the game, one officer was injured and transported to the hospital. Officers are authorized to use pepper spray to stop assaults and protect themselves and others.”
Should Michigan have ignored the flag placement? North Carolina and North Carolina State had their own post-game scene as did Arizona State and Arizona, which was broken up by ASU coach Kenny Dillingham. Can we arrest players and fine teams massively? “For such a great game, you hate to see stuff like that after the game. That’s just bad for the sport, bad for college football, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to learn how to lose, man,” Michigan running back Kalel Mullings said. “You can’t be fighting and stuff just because you lost a game. All that fighting, we had 60 minutes, we had four quarters to do all that fighting. And now people want to talk and fight. That’s wrong. That’s just bad for the game. Classless, in my opinion. People got to be better.”
“We’re going to win in your house and we’re gonna plant the flag,” said the Michigan quarterback, Davis Warren. “You should’ve done something about it.”
In a year filled with debate about Moore’s worth, Harbaugh’s successor was supposed to lose by 19 1/2 points, said the spread. The fans love him now. “When we gathered up in the fourth quarter, I told everybody to listen, listen to the sounds, there was nothing,” Moore said. “Knew at 10-10, we had them. That was the goal. We wanted to keep them on the ropes, keep them fighting and our guys did that. But it wasn't really about what anybody else thought. We didn't talk about belief, we talked about trust: Trusting each other, trusting yourself and trusting what you can do to go win the game.”
All I know: I picked Oregon to be No. 1 in the regular season. I was right, though I’m wrong about everything else. The first 12-team playoff season is bonkers. Miami lost at Syracuse and was knocked out of the ACC title game. Oregon and Penn State will play in Indianapolis next weekend. Texas was fueled by Arch Manning’s rumble for a touchdown — aren’t we excited? Notre Dame somehow is poised near the top, even after the Fighting Irish lost at home to Northern Illinois. Georgia needed eight overtime periods — an insane game, yet way too long — to beat Georgia Tech and avoided another embarrassment for the Southeastern Conference.
“I ain’t watching no football game that long,” Georgia linebacker Jalon Walker said.
Why is commissioner Greg Sankey so quiet about his league? Didn’t he want five or six qualifiers? He could have three. “I’m just proud of our guys and proud of their fight and grit and toughness,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “That's really my focus. I mean, just keep getting better and don't ride the wave of emotion. Because if things went the other way on one of those plays tonight, we'd be playing next week for our lives to go to the playoffs, right? So our opportunity is in front of us, and we've got to go out and play well.”
Rather than wait for the typical final four, America has every right to discuss Boise State, Arizona State and SMU. And every right to douse Alabama under Kalen DeBoer, who better avoid Nick Saban sightings though he might make the tournament.
The next few weeks will gouge more scar tissue, hopefully without pepper spray. Ryan Day will be gone. Oregon should have a first-round bye and proceed to a Jan. 20 championship game against … Texas, with Quinn Ewers or Manning or both? Matthew McConaughey will keep standing beside Steve Sarkisian, with too-tight pants? Am I right? Am I wrong?
Ohio State will be conducting corporate searches. Day has reached the dead of night.
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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.