Ryan Day spills the beans on how he keeps Jeremiah Smith, Caleb Downs & others stay away from NIL distractions

It can get tough for college coaches these days to keep their top talent away from NIL distractions, but Ryan Day has a way to counter that. The Ohio State coach, who is coming off winning the national championship after beating Notre Dame last season, shared his method for keeping his players focused.

Day is sitting on the stockpile of impressive, talented players like Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs. As such, he needs to make sure these players don't get away from the task at hand, even as they're making big NIL money.

The coach revealed his way to make it happen during his appearance on the College GameDay Podcast on Wednesday.

"I think it’s important to make sure that we provide them with a staff that they feel is helping them get better every day," Day said (31:05 onwards). "So, you know, a guy like Caleb—when he walks into the building and works with Marotti and Tim Walton and Matt Patricia—he knows he’s getting better every day because he feels that.

"For Jeremiah and Carnell and those guys—Brian and myself—we’re surrounding them with as much information as we can to help them get better. And as long as they feel like they’re getting better every time..."

Caleb Downs is widely considered the top safety prospect in the country and a potential top-five pick in next year's NFL draft. He had 82 combined tackles, eight tackles for loss, and two interceptions last season as he was named a unanimous All-American.

Meanwhile, wideout Jeremiah Smith is coming off a sensational freshman season where he had 76 catches for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns.

Ryan Day appreciative of Ohio State stars' mindset

Ryan Day's job becomes that much easier when the priority of stars like Jeremiah Smith, Caleb Downs and others is to win the championship. This also helps him to keep motivating his players to stay off from off-field distractions and be fully committed to bringing home another championship.

To explain it further, Day cited his first meeting with the players after the season, and he was impressed to learn their championship mindset.

"I give guys like Caleb and Jeremiah, you know, Sonny, Carnell, Tate—you know, these guys—a lot of credit," Ray said (30:24 onwards). "The first thing, when we got together after the season and went through our goals, the first one was to reinforce the culture. And they said, 'No, no, we’ve got to rebuild the culture, because there are guys on this team that don't know our culture.'"

All the above-mentioned players specifically asked Ryan Day to take off the national championship paraphernalia around the building. Day said:

"They were like, 'We didn’t win a national championship. We’re not defending national champs. We’re not defending anything, because they’re not going to take the trophy away. We're trying to win a championship.'"

"So that was the words out of their mouth. So I knew that they had the right mindset on this thing," Day added.

With the likes of Downs and Smith returning, Ryan Day's Ohio State will once again be among the favorites to claim the national championship next season.