Breaking down Day's Sunday presser

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Cover photo: Head coach Ryan Day protests a call during their game against Tulsa on Sept. 18. The Buckeyes won, 41-20. Photo by Ken Tishenkel/Columbus Wired.

In his first press conference since the loss to Michigan, Ohio State's Ryan Day took to the podium on Sunday afternoon immediately after it was announced that his Buckeyes will be playing Utah in the Rose Bowl. The third-year head coach addressed everything from the 108th rendition of the Rose Bowl, NIL, how hard this past week has been since their loss to the Wolverines and the decisions by safety/bullet Craig Young and freshman phenom quarterback Quinn Ewers to enter the NCAA's transfer portal.

Day also spoke to the media on a Rose Bowl Zoom press conference Sunday evening along with Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham.

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The two coaches on going to the Rose Bowl

"The goal here (at Ohio State) is to win championships and that's a goal that we have year-in and year-out and we didn't reach that goal," said Day. "However, we have an opportunity to go play in a very tradition-rich Rose Bowl and that means a lot. It's a New Year's Six bowl and the sixteenth time that I believe Ohio State's been in the Rose Bowl so there's a lot of tradition that's led up to that and I know that our guys are going to want to play hard to win that game."

Ohio State will represent the Big Ten because the Wolverines' win in Saturday night's conference championship game secured the Maize and Blue a berth in the college football playoff. And since No. 2 Michigan will play No. 3 Georgia in the Orange Bowl, that means the Big Ten's next-best ranked team must represent the conference due to contractual obligations with the Rose Bowl.

The Buckeyes (10-2, 7-1 Big Ten) will go in as the sixth-rated team in the country while the Utes (10-3, 8-1 Pac-12) are No. 11, which is a six-spot jump after they smashed Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game, 38-10. It was their second decimating of Oregon this season after they blew out the Ducks two weeks ago at home, 38-7.

Whittingham said the entirety of Salt Lake City is amped for the school's first-ever Rose Bowl appearance.

"Everybody in Salt Lake is elated to be heading down to Southern California for the Rose Bowl. Obviously our first trip. We're excited to come down and experience it. I've got a lot of buddies, old SC guys, that have been to the Rose Bowl several times, and they say there's nothing that compares to it. So we're really looking forward to it. The entire Salt Lake community will travel well. It's something that the community is very fired up about. We've only been in the Pac-12 about ten years now, so this is our first trip down here obviously. And we're looking forward to it."

Day said his guys were excited when they heard the news.

"I would say we heard about 2:30. We brought everybody together at 2:45 and explained to them what we were going to do in terms of a schedule for the next month. And the guys were excited to play in such a prestigious bowl game and with such a great opponent. They were very excited about that and looking forward to getting to work here this month."

He also said you can "count on everybody playing".

The game will mark only the second time that the two teams will have played one another. Their previous matchup was on Sept. 27, 1986 in Columbus and heavily favored the Scarlet and Gray, 64-6.

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Day on Ewers' and others' departures

Day said he would rather not share all of the details regarding Ewers' decision to leave but admitted he didn't see it coming.

"Yeah it kind of caught me a little bit, for sure, a little off-guard."

Day said he felt Ewers was in a "unique situation" at Ohio State but ultimately, the transfer portal has turned college football on its ear and seeing guys leave is just a part of the landscape now.

"Whether it's early enrollees or the transfer portal and those types of things, we're just going to do the best we can and try to adapt as time moves on but certainly we wish him nothing but the best of luck."

Day said that he did the best he could on communicating with Ewers as to where the 18-year-old true freshman's status lied in the quarterback room.

"You try to do the best you can on the front end of it of, explaining exactly what is going to happen and then do the best you can of communicating it and following through with it. But things change and you have to adapt."

That may sound cryptic but there could be an underlying story to it. That is, if you believe everything posted on social media.

According to an Instagram post by @recruits.cfb, Ewers' family requested that Quinn be named the starter for next year and Day reportedly said "no". If that's true, then that would provide some more substance to the above statement.

Day was not asked nor made a comment specifically on the transfer of redshirt freshman quarterback Jack Miller III but talked about the need for more than two QB's on the roster.

"We always want to have either three or four, that's always been the case. But it's not always that easy, as you remember."

He recalled the mass exodus of quarterbacks following the 2018 and 2019 seasons when the team saw three scholarship players leave in the span of a year following the spring game of 2018 to the spring of 2019. Those players that left were third-year sophomore Joe Burrow following the 2018 spring game when it became apparent that Haskins was the front-runner for J.T. Barrett's job after Barrett had exhausted his eligibility. Five days after the game, Burrow announced his intention to be a graduate transfer to LSU, which allowed him immediate playing time.

Then both former five-star, Gatorade offensive player of the year Tate Martell and four-star recruit Matthew Baldwin threw OSU the deuces early in 2019 when Georgia transfer Justin Fields announced he was leaving the Bulldogs to come play for Ohio State. Martell's departure wasn't without controversy as he was asked two days before their Rose Bowl game against Washington his thoughts on Fields coming to Columbus and Martell blew off the question with disregard, stating, "Why would I leave for someone who hasn't put in a single second into this program? To just run away from somebody who hasn't put a single second into workouts anything like that and doesn't know what the program is all about, there's not a chance. I will [be the starting quarterback]. I am 100 percent sure on that. I am not just going to walk away from something that I have put so much time into and there is not a chance that I won't go out there and compete for that."

Two weeks later, he entered his name into the portal. Four months later, Baldwin followed suit but without the drama.

That left the Buckeyes in a pickle with Fields being the only scholarship QB on the roster and had to scramble just to find some bodies to relegate the matter. They went shopping in the portal and found a couple of grad transfers in West Virginia's Chris Chugonov and Kentucky's Gunnar Hoak as well as Texas A&M transfer Jagger LaRoe to fill in. They also offered Danny Vanatsky and J.P. Andrade as well as LaRoe preferred walk-on status for that year.

"A lot of guys want to play and I get it," said Day. "We'll try the best we can to forecast but I feel really good about the guys we have on the roster right now."

However, there is yet another quarterback on the roster from Texas who is parting ways with Ohio State. Several media outlets began reporting on Sunday evening, and Columbus Wired officially confirmed through a source, that LaRoe has also entered his name into the portal. The Colleyville (Heritage) Tex. native currently has redshirt junior status and is eligible for two more years due to the NCAA giving all athletes a free year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Miller logged the most time of the three, playing in four games, going 7-of-14 passing for 101 yards. Ewers played the last two snaps of the game against Michigan State which were both handoffs from their own end zone. LaRoe never saw game action.

So now with Ewers, Miller and LaRoe's departures, that leaves two current scholarship QB's for next year (C.J. Stroud and Kyle McCord) with one high school commit (four-star USC de-commit Devin Brown) and Andrade, who is still in preferred walk-on status.

Day was also asked about redshirt sophomore safety/bullet Craig Young, who put his name into the portal on Saturday.

"I think Craig felt like he just wanted an opportunity to play more ... and we wish him nothing but the best of luck."

More on Ewers putting his name into the transfer portal can be read here.

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Day regarding the loss to Michigan and not getting into the playoff

"It's tough, the rivalry game is a rivalry game for a reason; it's means a lot to a lot of people. When you don't win, there's a tremendous amount of pain and nobody knows that more than the players and the coaches here. It's hard to swallow, you can't just move on after one day, it just doesn't work that way. Like I said in the postgame press conference, that will leave a mark and we knew that and it's going to hurt for a while."

He said if they had made some more stops against the run earlier in the game, the outcome would have been different.

As for not making the playoff for the first time in his short three-year career, he said he and the team were disappointed but they're going to use the loss to the Wolverines as motivation for winning the Rose Bowl.

"Certainly disappointed not to see ourselves in the top four like that because that's our goal as we head into every year. So yeah it's been a tough week for us. But you can only feel sorry for yourself for so long and at some point, you got to move on, get back to work and that's what we're going to do."

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Day on the current state of college football

If anything is for sure right now in Division I (FBS) college football it's that nothing is for sure.

The institution of Name, Image and Likeness has now given NCAA athletes from all sports in all divisions the ability to get paid and essentially, has turned amateur athletics into the minor leagues of sorts.

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Also changing the landscape of college sports has been the introduction of the transfer portal and the NCAA now allowing players from all sports to do a one-time immediate transfer regardless of class, redshirt or graduate student status without losing a year of eligibility. Previous to this year, only six sports - including football and basketball - had not been allowed an immediate eligibility transfer.

Day said they never want to see guys leave but he understands this is the new normal of college athletics.

"At one point, it was like 80 guys a day, average, in the portal which is unbelievable. Certainly we don't like to see guys leave but we understand it. Unfortunately, this is becoming somewhat of the norm. As coaches, it's kind of hard sometimes but we're going to have to kind of adapt and move forward."

One benefit, though, to the portal is when recruiting a player and they decide to sign with another school, if they opt into the portal at some point, "recruiting" them to come to Columbus can be an easier task.

"Those are the ones that you can kind of grab onto a little bit because you have a relationship prior."

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Day on the linebacker issues

He acknowledged that the linebacker position was an issue this year and it may not get much better next year but said that the portal could be benefit all positions if they decide to go that route.

"I think we're looking at all those positions to figure out what would make sense to add a guy through recruiting and the high schools process or is it the portal? We were a little thin at linebacker at times this year and we may be a little bit thin moving forward so we got make sure we bolster up that room."

He said the dynamic of the room is a huge factor on whether or not to bring in a fresh-faced kid straight out of high school or attempt to snatch an older, more experienced guy from the portal.

The Rose Bowl kicks off Saturday, Jan. 1 and will air on ESPN.