Imagn/ Joseph Maiorana
On Monday night, Ryan Day led Ohio State to a national championship over Notre Dame to ensure the team’s loss to Michigan will be the ultimate footnote in a season that ended with the Buckeyes winning their first title in a decade. However, his family will probably have a harder time putting the upset in the past based on what his son had to say about the backlash it generated.
Ryan Day’s track record against Michigan has understandably been a sticking point among Ohio State fans who take The Game very, very seriously, but it was very hard to imagine the head coach was going to fall to 1-4 against the Wolverines when the two teams met to cap off the regular season on November 30th.
However, things took a pretty shocking turn when Michigan walked away with a 13-10 victory in enemy territory before we were treated to one of the ugliest scenes of the season due to The Flag-Plant Heard Around The World. Ohio State’s fourth consecutive loss against its biggest rival didn’t prevent the team from earning an invite to the College Football Playoff, but Day found himself sitting on an absolutely scorching hot seat as a result.
That particular demon was firmly exorcised when Ohio State claimed its ninth national championship with a 34-23 win over Notre Dame a few days after his wife Nina shed some light on how she and her family harnessed the threats that were sent in their direction from some particularly unhinged members of Buckeye Nation to grow stronger.
Now, we’ve gotten some additional insight into the fallout courtesy of Day’s son R.J., a standout QB at St. Francis DeSales in Columbus who broke his high school’s single-season passing record as a sophomore a couple of weeks before Michigan pulled off the upset at The Shoe.
R.J. spoke to The Athletic about the fallout of the loss while noting his family needed private security to patrol the house he barely left in the weeks that followed, saying:
“We had security at our house. School was really bad.
I didn’t really leave the house much ’til after the Tennessee game. It was rough, but you’ve gotta hang on in those rough times because eventually things will turn back around again.”
In a perfect world, the people responsible for making the Day family endure that ordeal would be deprived of the pleasure other members of the Ohio State faithful derived from Monday’s win over Notre Dame, but here’s to hoping R.J. and Nina’s comments make at least some of them do a little bit of soul-searching.