The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Big Noon Conversations: Ryan Day on using the NFL as a model for CFB and yes, Targeting

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations, FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt is in Columbus to sit down with the Head Coach at Ohio State, Ryan Day. The pair discuss how different Day’s job is now from the time he began as Head Coach. They also get into the larger issues facing the sport and how much the NFL should be used as a model for the college game. Coach Day discusses how the expanded playoff will affect top programs like Ohio State. He then gets into how frustrating the targeting rule has become and why common sense needs to be applied more in those situations. They wrap up with a list of coaches that he admires in the game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One or two games could ruin your entire season right now, the way we haven't set up. I think the way it's moving forward with the playoffs, the idea is going to be to play your best football at the end of the season. Very much like the NFL. Most influential people in the sport talking about the sport globally. This time on the Joel Clachio's Big Noon Conversations, I talked to the Ohio State University head coach, Ryan Day. Coach, thanks for your time. I appreciate you being a part of this really special series that we've got. Most influential people in the sport talking about the sport globally.

I would love to start with what you think is going right in college football. Because to be honest, it's not talked about a lot right now. We all focus on the problems, and we certainly will get into those a little bit during our conversation. But what do you think is going right right now? Well, I think there's a lot going right. I think when you look at the excitement around college football, it's still as high as ever. You know, I think when you look at some of the environments that we play in, there's so much excitement around the sport. And, you know, now more than ever with social media and, you know, all the different outlets, I think a lot of our guys are becoming household names.

And I think people across the country just love college football. I think also, you know, it's become more than just football, though. I think that, you know, so many guys understand that, you know, there's more to it than. just what goes on in the field. And I think guys are grabbing onto that, realizing that, you know, when football's over, what's next for me? And there's more opportunity than ever for these guys.

It's, you know, a guy that I know you love and played for, and I've talked to a bunch. He calls them champagne problems. And Chip, you know, Chip Kelly says, listen, there's a lot going right right now. The kids are better players than they've ever been. You know, the product is probably better than it's ever been. It's more popular than it's ever been.

And, you know, do we need to fix some things here or there or figure out things here or there? Yeah, absolutely. But to your point, you know, there are guys, and they certainly, a lot of them play for you. Marvin Harrison is basically a household named throughout football, regardless of level. And I think that that's a great thing. And I also think it's a great thing right now that we're starting to see college athletes have real impact in their own communities through NIL relationships and all sorts of community involvement. And maybe that was happening before, but I feel like it's more talked about now and more visible now. So couldn't agree with you more.

Now, the hard parts of the sport, though, are there, you know, and they certainly, I'm sure, you know, way on you as the head coach. I like to call them CEOs of an entity. And they're much different than when you first got here as an assistant under Coach Meyer. What's changed the most for you since you got here to Ohio State? I think when when everything, you know, I first got here, you think about like where things were and then where things are now. But I think the thing that stayed consistent is that every year there's been a lot of change. You know, really started early on. You know, it was a big change for me to come here.

And then it was a lot of change in 18. And then, you know, my first year in 19. Then there was COVID. And now you have the transfer portal. have NIL. So one thing that stayed consistent is change and things move faster now than ever. You know, I saw or heard something that, you know, our guys now process more information in a day than they would in 1776 in a whole lifetime. You know, things just move faster nowadays. And so you have to be willing to adapt. And it's something that early on that I embraced was like

things are not just going to be the way it used to be. And to think that that's, going to happen is to set yourself up for failure. So, you know, sometimes you feel like you're driving without breaks going down the highway, but it's part of the process. I think it's part of the environment. And I think a big part of it is how competitive things are. Sure. When you're in an environment where things are so competitive, it's going to change really fast. And so, you know, being adaptive is important. The scope of change, I think, is drastic. You know, this has always been a sport of quick cycles just because of the nature of the sport and the kids are only here for you know some a lot of them in your program three years but you know four years and five years so

there's always going to be quick turnover and yet you throw in what i would deem as a fire hose of change of the transfer portal and nil and it just comes like barreling down it was like an avalanche on college football how in the world do you try to wrap your arms around that Like you said, it's, you know, coming on the heels of COVID and then those two things, like you said, really makes it a challenge. You know, I think we have to try to do the best we can of bringing everybody together in the sport. I think, you know, when different conferences come from different points of view, that's a challenge. But when everybody can come together is one, I think that gives us the best chance. I say it all the time that, you know, college football, the way it is right now, there's no

precedence. There's no benchmark. There's nothing really to compare it to. I think we have to do something to get ourselves somewhat in line with some sort of a structure, whether it's like the NFL. Not that we're going to be the NFL. We never are. We're collegiate. Or something that has something to compare it to. Sure. We don't have that right now. So we're constantly going through and trying to blaze new paths. And anytime you have that, there's going to be chaos. there's going to be hard feelings. Do you think it's closer now than ever to start at least looking at the blueprint of the NFL because of NIL, because of the nature of now the way that these players have become more famous,

now they're getting dollars, and rightly so, on their name, image and likeness? And now maybe the powers a B in our sport are more reticent to look over and be like, you know what, the NFL does this pretty well. Well, we have the model right there. It's right there. It's right there. And I think people are hesitant to say that because we are collegiate and it is college athletics. But these guys have been doing it for a long time and they know what they're doing. They have collective bargaining agreements. They have players associations. They have a playoff system in place. They have so many things that we can grab onto like you're saying. Not that it's ever going to be the NFL. It's not. But I think the more times we can look for them,

look to them for how they've solved some of these issues is going to be important. You know, I'm a firm believer in all walks of life that there's nothing new under the sun. You know, those that came before us, and we might be doing it at a faster pace. But everyone throughout history has dealt with similar problems, you know, whether it's culturally or in our sport. And the NFL dealt with very similar problems. One of the things that I think is a necessity, and you touched on it, is this move away from viewing college football in silos, Big Ten, SEC, PAC 12, whatever it is, and starting to view it more as a whole. And the reason that we can operate in silos right now is there's no overarching governing body over college football. People say NCAA, the NCAA is not an overarching governing body over college football.

It's an overarching governing body of like a million sports and players of all walks. Do you feel like we need a college football governing body that just oversees this sport and tries to look out for the hole rather than the silos? I mean, I think eventually there's a great chance that something like that can happen. I think that when, again, you look at structures that are out there that compete in this type of environment, that's typically what happens. I think we know what the challenges are. People come from different points of view, different parts of the country. And, you know, when there's different rules in place, different numbers of conference games, there's a lot of things that come into play.

So, you know, the more we can start to get down that road, the better chance we have of starting to come together. I think we saw that during COVID. You know, the Big Ten, you know, canceled their season, the Pact 12 canceled their season, other folks were playing. At that moment, that was an opportunity to recognize the fact that when big things come down the tube, we have to respond. And you could kind of see how we were a little segmented at that moment. Well, there's no doubt. And you bring up schedules. Schedules is a great part of this. I would argue that in a sport that is growing from a revenue perspective, we're never going to maximize that. growth. We're never going to maximize the potential of college football unless everybody gets on the

same boat, you know, and starts rowing in the same direction. It's always going to fall just short of what it could be, in particular when you're looking at the way that the postseason expands, the way that non-conference schedules are made up and who you're playing and where and who has rights to those games, so on and so forth. But this brings up even a point that I think can encapsulate a lot of the issues in college football. You touched on it. We both touched on it. Governance. Calendar. You know, the calendar in college football is broken. It's totally broken. It's hard to construct a roster. It puts an immense amount of pressure on individuals like yourself, the college coaches. And it also puts an undue amount of stress and pressure on the athletes themselves.

In particular, prospective student athletes in high school, kids that are trying to transfer. They don't know which coach they're committing to because everything happens all at the same time. The blender of the end of the regular season when all of a sudden you have early signing day, transfer portal, coaches getting hired and fired and assistants leaving to do. How do you navigate that? Well, it's a busy time. It's a busy time. When the early signing period happened, the idea was to take some pressure off of,

February, that first week in February. And for those who knew that they were going to, you know, to commit, you know, that folks weren't babysitting in January. And so what's ended up happening is I think it's over 90% of all, you know, guys sign in December. If we move it up again, it's just going to move up again. I'm a firm believer that when we make a change, we don't see really the ramifications of that decision for about three to four.

years down the road and every time we make it a change it it creates an whole another set of issues and so we quickly adapt and you know when you're talking about the most competitive environment you know in the world then you know guys are going to figure out ways to gain competitive advantages sure so while I agree with you it puts a lot of stress on December and right now you look at it and say this is crazy I think we really have to think through any change that we make right now just to say well let's move it over here let's make this a contact period let's do this you know we've already had enough change i've been saying this for years we

don't need to keep changing right now i think we need to think through like you said the bigger picture you know if there's going to be some some conference alignment if there's going to be some things like that then we can start to go down the road of changing things but as we sit here right now i'm in favor as hard as it is of kind of keeping things consistent right now the best we can avoid making too many changes because so many people come from different angles. That's one of the things I learned. Like if I go to the AFCCA convention and the head coaches meeting, you know, there's a hundred coaches in there. And there's, you know, big schools, small schools, you know, schools on the West Coast, schools on the East Coast. They all have their own set of issues. They're all coming

from different angles. So to get everybody to come together as one, to come up with answers is a huge challenge. And I think that goes to your point of somewhere coming down the road of figuring out how do we get one voice here so we can all go in the same direction. And it's fascinating, though, you know, you talk about, hey, let's make sure we're taking stock is what I think you're, right, of what's going on before we make drastic changes on individual problems. And yet, you know, change is coming. Big Ten's about to grow. USC and UCLA. The playoff's about to expand, you know, and we have to fix the playoff in terms of build it.

Sure. Because in 2026, it's going to be a totally new thing. So from your seat, this 12-team playoff, how it's constructed, how it could be constructed, how does it impact you at Ohio State? I think it's big. And we've already had those conversations. It's right around the corner for us. So I think the first thing is, you know, how you approach the season is going to completely change.

You know, for instance, last year we played Notre Dame first game of the year. I mean, you start that preparation in June and you're ramped up because that game is critically important. I think maybe if we don't win that game first game of the year, maybe we don't get into the playoffs. So I think so many of those games, you know, one or two games could ruin your entire season right now, the way we haven't set up. I think the way it's moving forward with the playoffs, the idea is going to be to play your best football at the end of the season. Very much like the NFL. You know, I think about when the Rams won the Super Bowl, I think there was a week and maybe three weeks in a row. They had lost three in a row.

That happens in October, I think it was. Yeah. That happens in college football. I mean, your season's over. Yeah. So that's a different approach. I think that probably a lot of NFL teams would tell you, you know, they're kind of feeling their way around in September. They find their identity in October and they turn it on in November.

Not that that's the way it's going to be in college football, but I think it's going to be more that way. It's going to be interesting to see how that playoff system works. Sure. I mean, the first four teams get a buy, the second four teams host. And, you know, playing a home game in Columbus in December is going to be fun. Do you like the home environment? Would you like to see them stick with the home environment throughout a couple of rounds? rounds. You know, Gene and I have talked about that, and there's, there's challenges that come

with both. I think there's arguments on both sides, but I think to think of playing a home game, a playoff game in December, the shoe was pretty, pretty fun to think about. But there's a lot of conversation to be had to, you know, get to the final decision. Yeah. One of the things, let me throw out an idea to you. One of the ways I think that we could help the calendar, help the overall process of how rosters are constructed for coaches and for players alike would be start the playoffs earlier, you know, and like they do in the NFL, not have this extended break where we're trying to construct rosters and then get back into football. I've just always felt like we should avoid the NFL playoffs and finish the season

and go ahead and play the playoffs. What would you think about moving the college football a playoff up to a point where there wasn't an extended break during December. Well, I think you have to deal with you. You have finals. There's a little bit of an issue there. And then I also think you have the holidays and there's a lot of play there. You know, I think it depends on how many games we want to play. And I think it's how soon do we want to start the season.

You know, you get the week zero. You know, how many games ultimately do we want to play and how early are we willing to start? But, you know, I think all those things need to be considered. But, you know, I don't think anybody would argue with, you know, playing your last regular season game, playing the, you know, Big Ten championship game and then continually continuing on. Maybe having a bye week if you're, you know, lucky enough to be one of the top teams, but then continually moving on because, you know, that's, again, what they do in the NFL. They keep things moving. Now, they have that two-week window before the Super Bowl. But, you know, you kind of get that rhythm going.

That is a long break in there. And it's something that we spent a lot of time preparing for our game this year, making sure that we stay in shape and make sure we're ready to go because you take three or four weeks and they can wear it on your team. So I think the coaches would be in favor of it, but I know there are some challenges that come with that. The aspect of college football right now that I feel like doesn't get a lot of conversation is the actual rules themselves. We talk about all this other stuff. Sure. And yet there's a few things that probably need to be looked at and tweaked on the field.

Yeah. They're talking about some clock rules right now. I'm in favor of that. I don't think we should be stopping the game clock after first downs, you know, in the first quarter. Now, I know volume is probably beneficial to you because you're a really good team, you know, and the more snaps that you're going to get, you're probably going to end up having a better result. But if you could fix one on-field issue, what would it be? The hash marks?

Oh, interesting. Yeah. I mean, I don't. You would move them tighter? Yeah, I'd go back again to the NFL model. I think those hash marks were built for, you know, football a long time ago. You know, I think like the NBA's made their adjustments. The college has made their adjusts.

They moved a three-point line. They've made adjustments. We haven't. And I think now today, you know, with, the type of athletes that we have, they're faster, they're bigger, they're more powerful. You know, putting the ball on a hash mark is just putting everybody in a smaller area of the field. And we're not playing, you know, outside the numbers to the field. I think putting the ball in the middle of the field, you know, more like in the NFL, opens up the entire game.

I hadn't thought. I thought for sure we're about to get into targeting there. Yeah, well, that's too soon. Right. Too soon on that one. Understandable. I will ask you about that rule, the targeting rule. it's obviously achieved what I think the intent was, which was change the way that defenders

defend and the strike zone. Everyone talked about that early. Sure. Now it's morphed, though. It's morphed into a problem because it's tough to officiate. People don't really understand why calls are made, why they're overturned, why they're upheld, all of those different things. So, you know, from a coach's standpoint, how frustrating is that call?

and I know this is probably too soon. Not that specific call. I'm just saying the rule in general. And how would you go about trying to alleviate it? I think the first thing is it has to be common sense. I think that's your point. We're getting so much into the weeds on this that we've lost where we started on it.

And what was the reason why we did this? To protect young men. And so if someone's launching at somebody's head and they're unconscious on the ground, that's not what we want here. And so I think sometimes, you know, we get into these slow motion things and we start to get so, you know, caught up in the little details of everything. And it's

not realistic, sometimes watching it in slow motion. So I think there has to be some sort of a common sense. I think we have to still trust the referees on the field and what they see. They're there for a reason. And then if it's egregious, you know, one way or the other, then that's where the instant replay comes into play. But I think right now what we've done is we've just put so much into the instant replay that what you see in, you know, a slow frame isn't really what's going on in the field. And we have to go back to the common sense and why the rules even put in the place. And I mean, replay has seeped into a lot of different areas and impacted games that I think a lot of us would like them not to impact. Right. I'll ask you about the schedule. The schedule,

you touched on it a little bit earlier. Some conferences play this amount of conference games. Some play, you know, eight, nine, all these different things. What would you like to see the makeup of the schedule be for all college football. Yeah, I just think it should be consistent. I do think that, you know, having nine games is great. I think that, you know, the quality wins will be important as we move into the playoff era. I think that, you know, certain wins are going to, you know, mean a lot more. It's going to look, it won't look like, you know, March Madness when it comes to that. But, you know, having quality wins will be important, not just one, the number of wins or losses. Because I think, to your point now, you know, you can put your schedule in such a way that you can set it up so that you get a certain amount of wins.

And at the end of the year, that looks a lot better than maybe a one or two lost team, but they may be better in the end. And I think the idea is to get the best teams into the playoffs. And so, you know, having a nine game conference schedule or maybe even down the road a 10 game conference schedule is a great thing. As long as it's consistent across the board, I think that's what's critical. Divisions? What do you think? Yeah, or nay, within conference? Well, I think having, you know, if you go away from divisions, you have to really make sure that it's equitable across the board.

Sure. How do you do that? You know, do you use the historical data or do you, you know, try to find trends based off of, you know, how a team is doing, what they've done the last couple years? I think that's the trick. You know, we certainly know in the NFL how they do it. Well, I was going to say, I'm a big believer that we should build schedules. not way out into the future, but based on finishes previous years. Even non-conference schedules,

there'd be ways to get much more valuable product in the non-conference if we built those based on previous years' finishes and within conferences as well. Agreed. You know, and I know you guys would bear the brunt of this because you're constantly one of the best teams in the Big Ten, if not the best team of the Big Ten. If you're one of the best, you should play the toughest schedule.

Right? I know that would be tougher on you guys, but it would be the same for Georgia or Alabama or Michigan. Those teams should be having to play the tougher ends of the schedules just like the chiefs are because they win the division or so on and so forth. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I think that we should look at them in at least two-year windows, not, you know, like you said, down the road because things change. You know, staffs change, trends change, recruiting changes, things. So I think we need to continue to look at that. But I think there's still going to be rivalries in place, you know, protected opponents

where you're going to have certain rivals that you play and then, you know, a rotating schedule. And I think that's healthy for the conference. But, yeah, I think you've got to look at all those types of things and figure out, you know, not exactly so much like, okay, if you win, you know, do you play the toughest schedule the next year? But I also think you have to look historically over a certain amount of years, you know, if a team is in, you know, category A, B, C, or D. you know there's a good mixture of those things yeah these are all things that i feel like are important to discuss as we move into the playoff era because again the playoff is is totally new we're building it basically from scratch um so i think that that's that's a fascinating deal all right last thing that i'll ask you about and this one is just more of a fun one um is there a coach

in the country right now that you look at and you're like i really respect what he's doing i appreciate what he's doing. It's tough playing against his team. Is there a guy out there? Oh, yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot. I think, you know, like you said, the level of play right now is as it's ever been. But I also think the coaching is that way, too, on both sides of the wall. I think, you know, office coordinators are really creative in what they do, but I also think defense coordinators are really on their stuff. They're making it really, really hard. I don't know what the numbers were. I need to go back and look at it, but it just seems like this past year, defense were just stronger across the board. Just did a great job of getting lined up

and calling their defenses. Now, but there's great coaches out there. I just, you know, think about certainly the guys that I know and in terms of, you know, Chip and, you know, I look at what Sonny Dykes did this year at TCU. Unbelievably job, you know, taking that team there. Isn't it fascinating in the transfer era, NIL era? It's like, you're going to see teams pop. That's it. And more so than ever before. Yep, yeah, exactly right. I'm hoping Dion can do it at my alma mater. Well, he's got some good momentum going. No, but there's a lot of great coaches. I think

Kailen DeBoard is a great job out of Washington. He was at Indiana. You know, that's Indiana really made a great run there. We talked about him a few years ago. Yeah, he's a really good coach. You know, I think Brett's doing a great job at Illinois. You know, they play tough and he's a really good coach. His guys play

well on both sides of the ball. They run the football. I got a lot of respect. for him. A lot of respect for all these coaches. I think they do such a great job, but I'm just trying to think of who else. Tough question on the spot, but to your point, it's a deep bench throughout, you know, every league has gotten, I think that can lay claim to saying, hey, we've gotten better in our coaching staff ranks, every single league. And I think that speaks to the quality of play out there from a general side. I appreciate your time, man. These are these are fun subjects for me and for a lot of fans in particular this time of year to just think about where

the sport is going, why it's great, and why we need to be diligent in the way that we go about building the future. Yeah, well, at this point next year, we'll probably do this again and I have another set of issues. So it'll be fun to see how it goes, and it's almost like we should just kind of track these conversations, see where we are, and then next year come up and figure out what the new challenges are. Appreciate your time, man.

How you got it.