Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of Cus Words Sports!
The first Ohio State football game week of the season is here, so I’m looking to establish some regular features. Here is one I’ll be doing after press conferences…
The most interesting thing I heard from Ohio State on Tuesday was Ryan Day talking about challenging his assistants the way Urban Meyer did as head coach of the Buckeyes.
“Yeah. I always say that if they ever recorded what is said on the headsets, that you can make a lot of money because, yeah. And back then too, Coach Meyer and I used to go at it.
“But I think the thing that I really respected about Coach and he respected about me was he would challenge me and then I would go right back at him because I felt strong about what we did. And as long as you were strong about it, then he respected that — but you better be right.”
I don’t know what version of “Ryan Day, Head Coach,” we are on, but this is certainly a new one preparing the Buckeyes to take on No. 1 Texas on Saturday.
(Feel free to submit suggestions in the comments.)
Of course that tends to happen when you win a national championship, but there’s more to it than that.
Now he can talk about managing coaches, what he learned from one of the best, and take that into battle in the biggest game of the first week of the season.
Seems like quite an evolution, doesn’t it?
I referenced after the first practice of the year Day has more credibility now. He can say the same things he was saying the last four years and actually be taken seriously since he has that trophy to his name now.
But that is not all that’s going on here.
Heading into his seventh season as head coach, Day has his own young offensive coordinator to groom in Brian Hartline, who is going to call the plays this week for the first time after an aborted attempt to put him in charge of the unit two years ago.
Day can’t just leave him to his own devices. He has to prepare Hartline to be able to handle the unit that has most recently been led by Day with the help of legendary innovators Kevin Wilson and Chip Kelly.
It’s hard to overstate the difference in experience between those guys and Hartline.
Not only were they former head coaches who also had years of experience as offensive coordinators, they literally helped make a whole new style of offense popular (the modern run-oriented spread offense).
“I do the same thing as like I challenge guys. I challenge them about their players. I challenge them about scheme. I challenge them about their technique. And if guys don't feel really confident coming back at you, saying, ‘No, no, we're going to do this.’
“Because that's what you want as a coach. You know, you call a play and [I am] like, ‘This play is not going to work.’ And they all come back, ‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Well, okay, good. Well, then let's see.’ And that's kind of what you're looking for.”
With so many storylines for this Ohio State-Texas game, it almost feels like Hartline taking the reins of the offense is getting lost in the shuffle.
Of course, that won’t be the case if the Buckeyes lose…
If you want to see more of what he had to say, check out my YouTube channel. That includes highlights from Day’s presser Tuesday (which start with the clip I shared by itself above) and other interviews since the Buckeye started practicing a month ago.
Later this week, I’ll have another regular feature to introduce, and I might have a post between now and then depending on how things go at player interviews Wednesday night.
Hope you are enjoying what I’ve done so far! If so, please remember sharing is caring! I need your help building up a readership in this newsletter, so I would very much appreciate you helping me spread the word about it.
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For more great sportswriting, check out my buddy Matt Brown’s newsletter that on the business of college sports.
