Welcome to the Skull Session.
The 12th Warrior Happy Hour with Jim Lachey was awesome on Thursday. If you missed it, that’s fine — just make sure you become a 12th Warrior and join us for the next one in June. We have another Ohio State legend lined up for a great time!
Have a good Friday.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Before the NFL draft, a moment between Ryan Day and Nick Saban went viral when the Ohio State head coach joked that Caleb Downs “was a mess” when he arrived in Columbus from Tuscaloosa.
Appearing on 97.1 The Fan’s Bishop and Friends, Day said he had planned to crack a joke — or at least try to — during his trip from Columbus to Pittsburgh for the NFL draft.
“I thought we could smile a little bit, laugh a little bit,” Day said. “I was just thinking on the trip over, when they ask about Caleb, what do you say? The guy was sort of ready-made, I think, when he came out of high school. I thought if the timing was right and Coach was there, we could maybe get a smile on him.”
Mission accomplished.
Ryan Day’s got jokes.
— Chase Brown (@chaseabrown__) April 23, 2026
With Nick Saban seated to his left, here’s Day on what Caleb Downs meant to Ohio State: “I think the first thing that surprised me, when Caleb came to Ohio State was that he was a mess. I don’t know what they were doing at Alabama.”pic.twitter.com/Khv7NykklR
Looking ahead to the 2026 season, however, Day and the Buckeyes will have much more difficult missions to accomplish than making Nick Saban laugh. Ohio State has road trips to Texas, Iowa, Indiana and USC on next year’s schedule, while Oregon and Michigan will visit Ohio Stadium.
“We’re gonna get challenged this year,” Day told 97.1 The Fan. “There’s no question about it. I mean, you look at the schedule that we have ahead of us… We’re gonna learn a lot about ourselves.”
Day views that as a good thing. This offseason, the eighth-year head coach has reflected on whether Ohio State might have been better prepared for the postseason had it faced more adversity before losses to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game and Miami in the College Football Playoff.
ESPN’s latest preseason top 25 ranks Ohio State No. 1 in the country. Oregon sits at No. 2, Texas at No. 5, Indiana at No. 6, Michigan at No. 14, Iowa at No. 19 and USC at No. 20. Day believes navigating that gauntlet will have the Buckeyes ready for another national title push in 2026.
“We push through this schedule, we’ll be playoff-ready at the end of the season,” Day said.
WHERE’D ALL THE TIME GO? It’s hard to believe Ryan Day is entering his eighth season as Ohio State’s head coach. It’s even harder to believe he’s now coached the Buckeyes longer than Urban Meyer, whose seven-year run in Columbus included the 2014 national championship.
Day is catching up to Earl Bruce and Jim Tressel, too. Bruce spent nine seasons leading Ohio State, while Tressel coached the Buckeyes for 10 years and led them to the 2002 national title. Ahead of them sits John Cooper at 13 seasons.
And then there’s Woody Hayes.
The legendary coach remains in a category of his own after patrolling the sideline in Columbus for 28 years. Could Day catch him? Who knows. That mark feels untouchable in modern college football, but maybe Day wants to stay in Columbus for-ev-er.
ROOM FOR ONE MORE. Jack Nicklaus is one of the greatest golfers — if not the greatest golfer — of all time. (You can debate Nicklaus vs. Tiger Woods in the comments.) But before he became “The Golden Bear,” Nicklaus excelled on the basketball court, too.
In fact, he nearly played for Fred Taylor and the Buckeyes in the late 1950s — the same era in which Ohio State won its lone national championship in 1960 and reached three consecutive title games from 1960-62.
In a 2024 interview with the PGA Tour, Nicklaus said Ohio State recruited him alongside Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek. He built strong relationships with both future Buckeye legends. So when Ohio State unveiled a statue honoring Lucas outside the Schottenstein Center in 2025, Nicklaus couldn’t have been happier.
“That’s very nice,” Nicklaus said Wednesday during a Memorial Tournament press conference. “He should have been honored.”
Lucas joined Nicklaus, Jesse Owens, Woody Hayes and Archie Griffin as the only Ohio State athletes or coaches with statues on campus. Nicklaus joked that if he had chosen basketball over golf, he never would have joined that exclusive group.
“You look at (Lucas and Havlicek), that’s why I didn’t play basketball,” Nicklaus said. “I would have had splinters sitting on the bench with those guys.”
Nicklaus, now 86, will host the 50th edition of the Memorial Tournament this year at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin. The tournament runs June 4-7 and features a loaded field that already includes back-to-back champion Scottie Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood, Hideki Matsuyama (2014 champion), Gary Woodland, Viktor Hovland (2023 champion), Justin Thomas and the world’s slowest player, Patrick Cantlay, who won the event in 2019 and 2021.
LET’S GET DOWNS 2 BUSINESS. There’s The Brotherhood — and then there’s actual brotherhood. Caleb Downs experienced the former for two seasons at Ohio State. The latter? He’s lived it his entire life alongside his older brother, Josh.
Now a wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts, Josh met with reporters this week and shared his excitement about eventually lining up against Caleb in the NFL.
#Colts WR Josh Downs on facing his younger brother, #Cowboys rookie S Caleb Downs, this year:
— James Boyd (@RomeovilleKid) May 6, 2026
He told me if he goes to the Cowboys, hes playing nickel. So, thats like head-to-head all game. I gotta let him know hes the little brother in the situation.
(Cc: @jonmachota) pic.twitter.com/CvSdFjzbUL
“I remember before he got drafted, not to talk about the Cowboys’ scheme or nothing, but he told me if he goes to the Cowboys, he’ll be playing nickel. That’s like head-to-head all game,” said Josh, who primarily lines up in the slot for the Colts.
Josh doesn’t know exactly when he’ll face Caleb this season. He just knows it’s coming. Like the rest of the league, he’ll be waiting for the NFL schedule release later this month.
“It’s all fun and games, but you know I still got to let him know he’s the little brother in the situation,” he said.
SONG OF THE DAY. "Where'd All The Time Go?" - Dr. Dog.
CUT TO THE CHASE. Shakira teases new song for the FIFA World Cup 2026 with Afrobeats star Burna Boy called "Dai Dai" (remember "Waka Waka"?)... From grading papers to decoding jargon, here are some ways people are putting AI to work... Yes, pen pal programs still exist in a digital world... The Attention-Span Panic... Could Claude Mythos actually destroy the internet?
