Can you name the most recent Ohio State football coach to win a national title with a roster comprised entirely of players he recruited?
That's right, it's Ryan Day. But that question's answer was Woody Hayes as recently as January 2024, which means when the Buckeyes beat Notre Dame for the seventh straight time, a 58-year old drought nobody ever talked about came to an end.
Woody was the last guy to win a natty with no one else's recruits. Jim Tressel won his in 2002 thanks in part to a bunch of John Cooper refugees, while Urban Meyer pulled it off in 2014 with over a dozen Tressel holdovers.
Which means Woody and Day are the only two coaches in program history to do this. Two. That's it. Do you know how many Ohio State football coaches are currently enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame? Nine.
That means seven coaching legends either failed to win national titles at OSU or only did so with the help of inherited talent. Winning a natty without any other head coach's help is so hard that Day is literally the only guy in program history who has done it and doesn't have a practice facility or the street where the stadium is named after him.
TRANSFER Portal fever may BE siphonING the innocence out of what many people wanted to believe college football recruiting once was.
Is that enough reason to give Day the benefit of the doubt when it comes to maintaining Ohio State's football standard during this unbelievably turbulent and reckless period for roster management, which future historians will describe as the sport's holy shit why was this ever allowed to happen without guardrails or governance and where the hell were the adults era?
It's the other side of normal, and that accounts for 100% of college football news in 2026. I'm going with yes. I think Day is obsessed and determined enough to solve this type of puzzle.
His stubbornness does not get in the way of existential crises, as he's more oriented toward effective problem-solving when dealing with massive issues. Getting wrapped around the axle proving Jim Harbaugh wrong about toughness or insisting on trotting out failed assistants and players instead of moving on quickly not the same type of puzzle.
He has no one to prove wrong in a landscape where tectonic plates are shaking, flipping, on fire, spewing dirty money, clean money, oil money and funny money. Day will just solve the problem. Not concerned. What else is there on the other side of normal?
Nov 15, 2025; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes wide receiver Quincy Porter (11) attempts to catch the ball as UCLA Bruins defensive back Rodrick Pleasant (18) interferes on the play during the second quarter at Ohio Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joseph Maiorana-Imagn Images
The portal turns me off and makes me love college football less. Am I a jerk?
My answer is yes, a big fat jerk. Nothing to do with the portal or college football. Be better.
Portal fever may siphon the innocence out of what many people wanted to believe college football recruiting once was. But the meat market is just out in the open now, baring its soul and declaring precious sales pitches like culture and development hollow and trivial.
A lot of guys either want to play or be paid for their sitting-on-the-bench services. This is a newly-learned insight which may result in teams who play slow instead playing faster and using more of their depth before it transfers out, with High Star Recruit That Ohio State Once Wanted at the very top of the resume. So it could be good.
But talent now flows a little too freely, which is bad - this era is without governance and requires something resembling rules, terms, benefits, provisions, procedures - google collective bargaining - but that will arrive eventually. In the meantime, we're subjected to the raw and uncensored version of what this looked like in parking lots and on living room couches for decades.
Yes, some kids grow up dreaming of a specific helmet, a certain school and the chance to play for the team they cheered in their youth. You know what everyone dreams of? Wealth.
Does this mean college football is just going to be a transfer portal sport?
My answer is no, that's impossible. You can't make the entire sport out of Quincy Porters and Mylan Grahams trading their high school recruiting grades for portal value.
That's because in order to build a derisked asset, a player should have been playable enough to beat out David Adolph started somewhere, played somewhere and developed in an observable manner. Teams that just rely on the transfer portal without contributing to it are not going to be successful.
The NFL doesn't even do that. They draft players and recruit free agents. The Patriots and Titans had the fewest original draft picks on their roster entering this season - and they both sucked. The Pats turned it around largely with high-value draft picks, and some Ohio State flavoring. It's a metaphor.
The puzzle Day is solving is what OSU's split should be, which positions they want to bias toward internal development and retention - and which ones make the most sense to lean on the free agent market. Once the novelty wears off, the successful programs will have a working methodology and healthy balance for player origin.
It might be by home state, position or possibly both. They're trying to figure it out.
Sep 6, 2025; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Grambling State Tigers tight end Covadis Knighten (9) catches the ball as Ohio State Buckeyes safety Faheem Delane (10) makes the tackle during the third quarter at Ohio Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Joseph Maiorana-Imagn Images
But I hate this. It doesn't feel like college football. It's junior pro football.
Please Stop Changing the Sport I Love sentiment has prevailed since that first Rutgers vs. Princeton game. The flying wedge was adopted from warfare in the early 1890s and used for several seasons before it was cracked down on for *checks notes* killing and maiming college kids.
That didn't stop a lot of teams, who went to great lengths to disguise it mid-play - and some still got caught. The NFL last flagged a flying wedge during the 1991 season, a century after its inception - and formally eradicated it from special teams in 2009. Wedge blocking. Cut blocks. Chop blocks. Tush pushes. Decade to decade, football changes in ways you stop missing.
Helmets and uniforms changing used to be less of an Oregon thing and more of a cultural crisis. Black and white televisions invented Away Jerseys so people at home could tell the difference between the teams. We have 4K now and don't need Away Jerseys anymore. Some of these quirks outlast their utility.
Scholarship limits. Coaching staff headcount contracts and expands. Integration took decades to cascade throughout the country. Everything changes. Demanding that talent acquisition stays the same is pissing directly into a hurricane-levels of futility.
Also, your favorite team has been playing Junior Pro Football for decades. A dozenish other programs were doing that too, informally. Now it's just expanding because a free market creates growth, innovation, choice and competition. Read a book, dude.
Very few people saw this coming. What else don't we see coming?
There's a lot of chatter about coaches fleeing the college ranks because of the amount of new, non-football work that goes into being a football coach. That feels anecdotal; what I don't see is anyone asking is if this era will produce a higher level of churn amongst college coaches.
Player retention is more volatile than ever, so will that impact the value of staff stability? Could Day go into the imaginary coaching portal and get the best, most qualified coach in any given year regardless of having a serviceable incumbent?
Unintentional trick question. Day has coached exactly one season without a new coordinator, and that was 2021 - so he's doing it already. But will the Ohio State football program of the future choose to elevate a guy in the room with no experience to Offensive Coordinator instead of hiring a de-risked coach who already has that experience instead?
Whew, I hope so. Learning on the job at Ohio State has become a recurring phenomenon that a program with its wealth, resources and attractiveness does not need to stoop to. That doesn't have anything to do with the transfer portal.
The program can afford experience and attrition. Retaining guys through risky promotions is part of how they ended up with an offense that could not get out of 2nd gear. Once Day solves the puzzle, the program's advantages should skirt any market correction.
James Smith, left, and Qua Russaw, right, signed to play at Alabama during an early signing day ceremony at the school in Montgomery, Ala., on Wednesday December 21, 2022. Smith was the top DT in the portal this offseason while Russaw is a very talented edge rusher - and both will be Buckeyes in 2026. © Mickey Welsh / Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK
So is Ohio State doing this right? Or are they being cheap?
My answer is you need to chill out. Coming up with the worst version of Ross Bjork in your head is not a good use of your mental health. Spending without discipline creates a cascade of retention problems nobody wants to manage. He is not going to shoot straight. He's an executive; they rarely ever do that.
Bjork speaks exclusively in corporate slug sound bites. I am a corporate slug by day and fluent in this dumb language. Corporate sluggery is designed to be sterile and buzzwordy without spilling state secrets. You should not read into it seriously because it isn't serious. It's tepid appeasement to the shareholders.
"We are being aggressive but we're also doing it the right way... they expect us to win at a high level, but do it with integrity."
— Adam King (@AdamKing10TV) January 13, 2026
Ross Bjork says OSU is aggressively working to be at the top of NIL world, but they are going to follow the College Sports Commission rules: pic.twitter.com/qLc24UYWEK
I do not believe for a second Ohio State is following imaginary rules in order to feel righteous. Did you just start following Ohio State sports recently? If you truly do not believe your favorite team is cutthroat and bloodthirsty enough to compete, then you might be too fringy for the Fringe.
Believing the Buckeyes won't do what's necessary to win every trophy college football has to offer while operating in a sustainable manner is the most wasted energy imaginable. Like worrying a goose might not be silly enough. Snap out of it.
You know what's unsustainable? Look at Michigan the past 25 years and choose the three consecutive seasons that scream Which One of These is Not Like the Other. To quote your mom's favorite band, the years start comin' and they don't stop comin'. They're engineering this for a long-range plan to win every year, not a one-time Natty or Bust affair.
Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza scrambles away from Kenyatta Jackson Jr. during the Big Ten championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Dec. 6, 2025. © Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
How is Indiana doing it? I heard they were hacking and stealing practice footage.
This requires a disclosure - I attended Ohio State, but I also attended Indiana. Was on the newspaper staff there and edited a whole bunch of stories. Enjoy seeing them do well - I attended the Peach Bowl, after the Cotton Bowl and B1G championship games.
But I have no real emotional attachment to IU football because as a child who cried on Saturdays whenever my team won or lost, it wasn't because of the Hoosiers. That's enough about me.
This conspiracy has made the rounds. IU has picked off passes on first drives of five games, including the B1G championship - which isn't even pictured here in this post:
Wait what. pic.twitter.com/al4kJSYVE6
— Matt Wensing (@mattwensing) January 11, 2026
Curt Cignetti didn't beat the shit out of teams he played while leading Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Elon or James Madison by hacking into imaginary practice footage at rival schools of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, The Colonial Athletic Association or the Sun Belt, respectively.
He did it by following his recipe, which is to the best of my football diagnosing ability, as follows:
- Play Fast, Physical and Relentless
- Beat the other team with hammers until it dies
- Win every game 56-0 or else it is going to feel like losing
There's plenty to envy, which is still weird to say about a program that hired Cam Cameron, Bill Lynch and Tom Allen on purpose. But what IU has been doing is a wicked combination of talent evaluation, staff stability, unified culture, precision coaching and effective roster management.
Like the mix between portal and recruited guys, they've balanced men (> 22) and bright young talent in a way that's served them well. And besides, even if IU was found to be engaging in an elaborate, illegal scouting scheme supported by profound evidence - the NCAA decided that previously impermissible advanced scouting is actually allowed now.
It simply costs money and reputation. Take on 29 years' worth of show causes and pay a fine.
My answer is Indiana is a modern blueprint. Its coordinators coordinate, position coaches coach positions, everyone has one job while the hierarchy and mission are understood and revered.
Every Hoosier does his job without being spread too thin or compromising the ultimate mission, which is - see above, the part about Relentlessness and Hammers. As for Cignetti, he keeps himself out of Overthinking Jail - a little mental prison a lot of coaches lock themselves into via micromanagement.
Some coaches conclude their great defense allows them to chill out a bit offensively. Others rely on firepower and engage in scoring contests. Playing slowly, proactively going with silent counts and telegraphing your timing in stadiums that aren't very loud - this will never happen at IU with Cig.
Score 56 points against every team, whether it's Kennesaw State in Bloomington or Oregon in Atlanta. After the Hoosiers will beat Miami on Monday night, the entire sport will officially be on the other side of normal.
