"You're expected to win the rivalry game": Ryan Day gets honest about moving on from humiliating Michigan loss of 2024 season

Ryan Day wrapped up the 2024 season with a terrific 14-2 record and lifted the golden trophy, finally ending Ohio State's national championship drought of 10 years. Despite all that enormous success and a dominating performance, Buckeye fans were not contained because they lost a crucial game to the Team Up North, a.k.a. the Michigan Wolverines. It stings the fanbase even today and Day embraces the emotion of desperate fans who have been through these losses the last four seasons.

The veteran head coach claims the standards at Ohio State are on a whole different level and having a passionate fan base like the one in Columbus, it's hard to deal with losses. Not to mention, he was receiving death threats and his family was under constant fire for many days until the dust settled with playoff wins.

Ryan Day was in Las Vegas this week, where he attended Big Ten media days and shared his thoughts about the team's expectations for 2025. While speaking to Sports Central, he mentioned that he has moved on from the Michigan loss and this matchup happens every year. Now it is time to focus on a new season.

“When you're at Ohio State, you're expected to win every game," Day said to the panelists on Tuesday. [Timestamp - 2:40] "You're expected to win the rivalry game. You're expected to win a national championship. When you don't, you have to deal with it.”

“And I think going through, you know, the Oregon loss in the last last game of the regular season, it allowed us an opportunity to show the character of our team and the resilience of our team, and I think it made us stronger in the end and allowed us to dominate down the stretch in some of those games that we played.

"And when you look at the run that we went on, it was historic. Was the biggest and best run there's been in college football history. And I don't think we would have been able to do that in such a dominant way if we didn't go through some adversity along the way,” he added.

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Ryan Day vows to start fresh for yet another national championship

While college football fans view Ohio State as the defending champions, coach Ryan Day likes to keep it as fresh as possible. While speaking to the reporters at media day on Tuesday, he mentioned that his team has no intentions to remain defending champions but looks at the season just like any other team looking to lift the trophy.

Day shared the mindset of his players, saying that within a week of winning the championship, the team was clear to let all the past successes set to rest and restart the grind for a new campaign.

Over 14 players have left for the NFL and multiple fresh faces have joined the program. It is now time for Ryan Day to build chemistry and take on the mighty Texas in Week 1 at home.