I think it’s important for these guys to know we love them and care about them and at the end of the day, that’s going to motivate them to want to lead, play harder, and all the things we ask them to do. Which is a lot.
— Ryan Day
If you’re dominant on one side of the ball, you set yourself up for getting beat if you’re not on both sides of the ball.
There’s obstacles, there’s challenges, there’s things that come in the way. So building relationships and building some of the expectations on the front end helps you deal with them so it doesn’t just all come caving in.
I’d like to think I’m one of the most competitive people I know.
But I think sometimes, coaching less is better. That’s the art of coaching, figuring out with each kid what is the right way to approach it?
The ‘Team Up North’ is something that we talk about every single day. And the best way to respect a rivalry is to work it every day. And we do.
I hope we win a lot of games, that's part of the job at Ohio State. But you want to have a bigger impact than that when you're done. You want to leave a legacy behind, you want to make change.
The Big Ten championship game is one of our goals year in and year out. So that’s just the focus.
You can’t just drive with no brakes and think that everything is going to go great, and the minute something goes bad, you fall apart.
Adam Sandler, Chip Kelly, Dan Mullen and I all grew up within about a mile of one another. We had a nice community in Manchester. The school systems are great and people care about each other.
And some of the best coaching you can do is not telling kids something.
If you do a good job right now, today, then tomorrow will take care of itself. That’s all you can do.
If we have somebody who may be ranked a little higher than another person, if one of them wants to be a Buckeye, wants to play in that rivalry game, play in the Horseshoe, that matters to us. We take all those things into consideration and we try to be as aggressive as we can on the recruiting trail.
You do everything you can to be successful. You know that you have to win games. It’s a must. So you do the things that put your guys in the best position to be successful schematically.
I make sure in recruiting that the families know that the kids can come to me. I think that matters. I can be a mentor and a resource for them. I didn’t necessarily have that all the time growing up.
I think any time there's a change in leadership there's a different personality, there's a different style involved with it, different demeanor.
You’re working a million hours and you’re on the road recruiting and you’re doing all these things, but at the end of the day, you’re competing for a championship. You’re competing for a Big Ten Championship, you’re in the Rose Bowl, you’re taking your family to the Cotton Bowl.
