I'll try to articulate this as best as I can.

In light of today's Skully covering Ryan Day's elite ability at being a human being that understands perspective and supporting his program in ways off the field, as well as the numerous stories about how he's handled mental health and relationships in his tenure as our head coach it got me thinking.

In today's college football world with NIL, the transfer portal, and everything else changing so quickly it's clear there are teams with different strategies on approaching the current landscape. There are teams that are saying "we are going to do what we can, pay what we can, in order to win NOW" and there are teams saying "we are going to do what we do because the package we offer for kids has proven its value and we are going to build ourselves a program around that foundational success and value".

Coach Day is clearly in the latter camp with his approach to recruiting and NIL being that we aren't going to bribe you to come here. You are going to want to have to come here and we are going to give you every opportunity in the world once you are here. But you have to want to be here and fit our culture.

In my opinion, this strategy sets a school up for long term success. We've seen over and over again that Ohio State is one of the only programs that have had few sustained periods of losing seasons or lack of success. In general, over the last handful of decades we are almost always in the thick of the national title race, or at least the conference title race. We have fewer losing seasons than national titles over the last couple of decades which is remarkable. This foundational success is built upon a great culture and tradition at our school that Day has taken to yet another level.

That brings me to this topic's true question:

Would you rather have immediate success by having the school go all in on getting the best of the best RIGHT NOW (a la A&M) and win a natty or two over the next 5 years, but risk future success because of the cultural upheaval/players that want to get paid now but then will leave, OR would you rather have possibly "less" success right now in terms of nattys, but have Ohio State achieve decades of success like they have been?

For me, give me the long term success without thinking too hard about it. We've appeared in 5 national championship games in the last 20 years, winning two, and we have an incredible program both on and off the field with The Brotherhood proving to last beyond college.