After Jim Harbaugh, the college football coach with the most to lose in the Michigan sign-stealing scandal is Ohio State’s Ryan Day. Coaching the Buckeyes comes with insane expectations, and there have been grumblings about Day’s last two losses to his most hated rival, the team’s physicality and anything else OSU fans can think of to grumble about.
While it’s fair to blame Connor Stalions for the Buckeyes’ no-shows, that’s no excuse for losing. There are questions about how long Stalions had personally scouted opponents, with a Big Ten source claiming the scheme was as sophisticated as it was disturbing.
“This is worse than both the Astros and the Patriots – they are both using technology for a competitive advantage and there are allegations that they are filming previous games, not just in-game. If it was just an in-game situation, that’s different. Going to film somewhere you’re not supposed to be. It’s illegal. It is too great an advantage.”
OK, if it was that bad, other Big Ten coaches would have heard about it, and they did.
“We were told to be careful because they had a guy who could pick plays,” was one Big Ten head coach told Yahoo Sports. “It was too late in the week to change our signals, but another staff member told us about it [Stalions].”
To me, that curses other Big Ten coaches almost as much as Harbaugh. The Houston Astros’ sign-stealing is high profile because MLB clubs had their eye on Houston long before the league officially got involved, and smart teams tried to mitigate the Stros’ “creepy” scouting.
The Washington Nationals continually changed their signs during the 2019 World Series, while the Yankees had to be notified of a foul before attempting to combat it. Well, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa wait for no one, and New York is still waiting for another trip to the World Series.
That’s where Day and Ohio State come into the picture. No one in Columbus thought it was weird that CJ Stroud looked like a shadow of himself against UM, and no one else? The man reset the NFL record books for rookie quarterbacks and torched Georgia’s defense for 348 yards and four TDs, but he couldn’t find an open receiver against a Wolverine defense that was mauled by TCU?
Day strikes me as a brilliant attacking mind and a very good head coach; he’s a big reason why expectations remain in the stratosphere at Ohio State. At the same time, there may be a bit of naivete because his success comes so effortlessly.
While we have no idea how long Stalion’s operation lasted, or to what extent, the Wolverines didn’t start rolling through the Big Ten until 2021. You think old Dad Pants didn’t feel his seat getting hot? In the COVID year they were 2-4.
“Blasting out at your alma mater” is the kind of pressure that leads to despair. If you’ve never been in the crosshairs of your naysayers, which hasn’t really happened with Day, I understand why there would be an assumption of integrity.
However, that is not the reality, and there is too much at stake to assume that your opponent is playing fair just because you are. Those two L’s to Michigan probably cost Stroud the top pick in the NFL draft and a Heisman, but they cost Ohio State more.
With a win in 2022, the Buckeyes would have avoided a first-round matchup against reigning champion Georgia in the College Football Playoff. Beat Michigan in 2021 and they’ll take their spot in the CFP. Competitiveness is not the same as ruthlessness, and – rightly or wrongly – winning a national title demands as much of the latter as it does of the former.