Ryan Day wasn‘t surprised when Ohio State’s helmet communications went out during the second half of the Buckeyes’ win at Michigan on Saturday.
During his press conference on Tuesday, Day confirmed that Ohio State lost its helmet communications during a portion of the second half of the Buckeyes’ 27-9 win in Ann Arbor. And he said the Buckeyes were prepared for it because he had “an inkling” during the week that might happen.
“We lost communication there in the second half, but the good news was that earlier that week, I thought there may be an inkling that that may happen, so we had a plan for it,” Day said. “We had a wristband plan, and then we would bring Julian (Sayin) over, and that was just getting us through it until we got the headsets back up and running, which took a little while to get done. But just by chance, we had a plan for it, and so we were ready to go when it happened.”
Asked why he had that inkling, Day didn’t make any specific accusations against Michigan but said the Buckeyes were “just ready for everything.”
“You just got to be ready for anything. And when you go into any big game, you're always trying to put contingency plans in place for anything that could possibly happen,” Day said. “And so, yeah, I was in here on Friday. And I think some of the guys in the staff were looking at me sideways like, ‘Why would you think that would happen? I said, ‘I don't know, we just got to be ready for anything. It's funny how your mind works.”
Day winked at the end of his answer.
Ryan Day had an inkling Ohio State could lose headset communications against Michigan pic.twitter.com/pDQ0GWcNHc
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) December 2, 2025
A pair of clips posted to social media on Monday showed Ohio State staffers arguing with a Michigan staffer during the game, allegedly in regards to the helmet communication.
Another angle of the Sideline Altercation when Comms went down in Ohio State vs Michigan #MichiganCheats https://t.co/qKWLI732Wf pic.twitter.com/Ng6zC4qvdD
— Intrinsic (@intrinsicvalyou) December 1, 2025
Michigan denied any involvement in the helmet communications going out in a statement to ESPN on Tuesday.
"We do not manage their communication system. Each athletic department provides electrical power and fiber lines that are equal on both sidelines. Ohio State has staff within its athletic department that handles coach-to-player communication and the coach-to-coach headset system. The coach-to-player communication system is run by a third party chosen by the Big Ten. A neutral technician is on the sidelines to assist both teams at every game across the conference," the statement read.
"With any cellular-based communication system, there are technical issues that happen from time to time in stadiums across the country. We don't want the opponent to have issues because our team would have to take our communication system down as well. No one benefits from a system failure.
"In this instance, our game event manager, stadium supervisor, an electrician and staff immediately jumped in to assist with the issue on Saturday. The issue was resolved before anything needed to be taken offline."
Regardless of what caused the helmet communications to go out, it didn’t derail Ohio State’s dominance, as the Buckeyes outscored Michigan 10-0 in the second half on their way to a 27-9 victory over the Wolverines, Ohio State’s first win in The Game since 2019.
Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin said after the game that losing the helmet communications reminded him of playing high school football, as he had to run over to the sideline between plays to get play calls from Day, but he didn’t allow the change in protocol to fluster him.
“Right at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the headsets stopped working,” Sayin said.
“I told somebody, I was like, ‘This feels like high school football.’ I was running over to the sideline to Coach Day, getting the play, then running back in. We were prepared and we had a good plan going into it but we had to adjust on the fly.”
