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The Ohio State Buckeyes and head coach Ryan Day agreed on new 7-year extension today. ESPN’s Pete Thamel was first to break the news on social media.
This new 7-year deal will keep head coach Ryan Day with the Ohio State Buckeyes through the 2031 season and it will also make him the second-highest paid coach in all of college football, trailing only Georgia’s Kirby Smart in annual salary.
The move from Ohio State makes sense but it is also an interesting one for several reasons… For starters, it’s evident that no single person in the 12-team College Football Playoffs benefitted more from expansion than Ryan Day. It wasn’t as if he was underpaid before. Ryan Day’s salary prior to the raise was $10.02 million/year which made him the 5th highest-paid coach in the land.
With the raise, Ryan Day will earn $12.5 in total compensation each year. Only Kirby Smart who makes $13.28 million year earns more.
Another reason this move is fascinating is that it seems to signal that when it comes to the Buckeyes‘ priorities, National Championship are more important than beating Michigan. As an FSU alum, I have no stake whatsoever in the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry but in my own experience, I’d 1,000000% rather have a National Championship than beat our rivals. I’d take a loss to Miami any year if it mean the Seminoles went on to somehow in it all.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel shared the news of Ryan Day’s raise and extension just after 10am on X (née Twitter):
Ryan Day and Ohio State have agreed to a new contract. It's a seven-year contract that will keep Day as coach of the Buckeyes through the 2031 football season It will add three years onto his current agreement and will be valued at $12.5 million in total annual compensation.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) February 6, 2025
Comparing Buckeyes’ sentiment toward Ryan Day after losing to Michigan (again) and how they feel about him now is like comparing apples to oranges. Day’s perception has completely changed after winning Ohio State’s first natty in a decade…
But it is worth mentioning how many Buckeyes fans were ready to run him out of Columbus after the loss to Michigan. And it will be very interesting to how the Ohio State faithful react if/when Ryan Day loses to Michigan in the future as well as how Michigan and Ohio State will now recruit off the fact that Ryan Day’s raise makes him the second-highest paid coach in the land.
Let me know what you think about the raise in the Facebook comments!