There was nothing special about No. 1 Ohio State's otherwise ho-hum win 42-3 win over Minnesota on Saturday night.
The victory moved the defending national champions to 5-0 on the season and head coach Ryan Day to 75-10 on his career. And in moving his winning percentage from .8809 to .882, Day became the winningest (by percentage) coach in college football history. He surpassed Knute Rockne, whose 105-12-5 mark from 1918-30 at Notre Dame resulted in an .881 winning percentage.
"Glad you brought that up, because this is the last game I'll ever be coaching at Ohio State," Day said after the game. "I'm gonna hang it up and that's it. I'm gonna do a walk off right now."
"No, a long way to go," Day continued. "(The record) has everything to do with the players, the coaches in this place. When you recognize how long some of those coaches coached, and you recognize what they went through, the seasons and the different changes, you just can appreciate how long they coached. And, you know, some of these seasons here are like dog years at Ohio State, but but I'm just fortunate to be here."
There are a number of ways to divvy up Day's 75-10 record to date, but here are a few of my favorites:
-- To date, his worst season came in 2023, an 11-2 campaign in which the Buckeyes finished No. 10 in the AP poll.
-- Day has currently won nine consecutive games. His longest streak is 13, but he's also ripped off two 11-game winning streaks, a 9-game streak, and a 7-gamer.
-- Day is 15-8 vs. the AP top-10, with an ongoing 5-game win streak.
-- Which means Day is 60-2 against everyone outside the AP top-10.
And the truly scary thing is, Day and the Buckeyes may truly just be getting started. With the 8,000-pound gorilla off his back having won Ohio State's first national championship since 2014 following nine straight AP top-10 finishes, Day has Ohio State set up to go on a Nick Saban-like run (or, at least as close as one can come in the era of a 12-team playoff). The Big Ten does not offer the same week-in, week-out competition as the SEC -- the analytics guru Kelley Ford gives Ohio State a 93 percent chance or better to win all but three games moving forward: at No. 22 Illinois (84%), vs. Penn State (79%), and at No. 15 Michigan (67%). Day has mastered the art of retaining, importing and recruiting top talent, and hired NFL head coaches like Chip Kelly and Matt Patricia to be his coordinators, giving his superiorly-talented teams a schematic advantage as well.
Truly, Ohio State is a program with no weaknesses at the moment, and no signs of slowing down for as long as Day wants to continue coaching.