ATLANTA — Maybe Ohio State football fans will like coach Ryan Day now.
Fifty-one days after suffering the worst loss of his career, Day guided the No. 8 Buckeyes to their first national championship in 10 years with a 34-23 victory over No. 7 Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff National Championship game presented by AT&T on Monday night.
“The story gets to get told now,” Day said. “It’s a great story about a bunch of guys who have overcome some really tough situations. There was a point where there was a lot of people that counted us out, and we just kept swinging and kept fighting.
“It’s the reason you get into coaching, to see guys overcome things, learn life lessons and then reach their dreams. This is what happened tonight.”
The Buckeyes led the Irish 31-7 midway through the third quarter, but the Irish trimmed their deficit to eight points with just more than four minutes remaining.
Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard threw a 34-yard touchdown pass to Jaden Greathouse with 3:03 left in the third and tossed a 2-point conversion to tailback Jeremiyah Love to make it 31-15. Then, after a late defensive stop, Leonard found Greathouse again for a 30-yard touchdown and Beaux Collins converted the 2-point attempt to make it 31-23 with 4:15 left.
The Buckeyes finally put away the Irish for good when quarterback Will Howard threw a deep ball to freshman Jeremiah Smith, who beat cornerback Christian Gray for a 56-yard gain to the Irish 10. That led to Jayden Fielding‘s 33-yard field goal that put the Buckeyes up 11 with 26 seconds left.
The victory was redemption for Day, whose team fell to rival Michigan, the so-called “School Up North,” for the fourth straight time in a stunning 13-10 defeat at home Nov. 30. That loss, in which the Buckeyes were 21-point favorites, knocked them out of the Big Ten championship game.
Day and his players were booed mercilessly as they left the field that day.
“There’s a lot of things that certainly have an effect on you and your family,” Day said. “But you know, when you sign up for this job, that’s what you sign up for. You’ve got to be strong enough to withstand those storms to come out the back end, and now it’s an even better story.”
That defeat didn’t eliminate Ohio State from the first 12-team CFP, and the Buckeyes took down No. 9 Tennessee in the first round, No. 1 Oregon in the quarterfinals and No. 5 Texas in the semifinals before beating the Fighting Irish in their 16th game of the season.
That was what made Monday night so special for Day and everyone around him.
“Look, our program is never going to be defined by one other program — never,” Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said. “That doesn’t mean anything about de-emphasizing [the Michigan rivalry]. We will never be defined by somebody else, we take the lead. We’re not going to let others define who we are and what we stand for.”
Ohio State’s players said Day accepted some of the blame for coming up short against Michigan again. But the shocking defeat might have been exactly what the Buckeyes needed in order to capture the seventh national title in program history.
“We had to address all the issues we had on the team,” Buckeyes defensive tackle Tyleik Williams said. “Everybody spoke up and just fixed those problems that we had. The leadership on this team is like I’ve never seen. That wouldn’t have happened a couple years ago.”
With a 70-10 record, Day now has the second-best winning percentage (87.5%) among coaches with at least 80 FBS games. Only Walter Camp, who coached at Stanford and Yale in the late 1800s, had a better winning percentage (90.7%).
“I don’t pay attention to [the criticism],” Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said. “I don’t know what else you can do besides winning a national championship.”
And with Michigan having claimed the last four-team CFP following the 2023 season, the Big Ten captured consecutive national titles for the first time since 1940-42, when Minnesota won back-to-back titles and Ohio State added a third.
Monday’s game also was redemption for Howard, the Kansas State transfer who struggled in his first start against Michigan. Against Notre Dame, Howard completed 17 of 21 passes for 231 yards with two touchdown passes, while running 16 times for 57 yards.
Quinshon Judkins, an Ole Miss transfer, ran 11 times for 100 yards with three total touchdowns. Smith caught five passes for 88 yards with one score.
Leonard led the Irish with 255 yards on 22-for-31 passing with two touchdowns. Greathouse caught six passes for 128 yards with two scores.
This one was especially satisfying for the Big Ten because it came in the SEC’s backyard. The SEC was left out of the CFP title game for the second straight season, which hadn’t happened since 2004-05.
Notre Dame, which was trying to capture its first national championship since 1988, had its 13-game winning streak snapped. It was Ohio State’s seventh straight victory against the Irish.
“We didn’t get it done, and it hurts,” Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “My job is to figure out why, and I will. But I told these guys, they’ve left this program better. I don’t care if you were here for one year or you’ve been here for six years, our program is in a better place.
“The outlook of Notre Dame football is extremely high. As long as the people in that locker room that come back understand what it takes, the work these guys have put in, there’s a lot of success in our future.”
Ohio State looks loaded for bear under Day as well. And it looks like he’ll finally have Buckeyes fans behind him — at least until they play Michigan again in 313 days.
