Nick Saban defends Ohio State football coach Ryan Day ahead of CFP

On December 21, 2024By Littum

Nick Saban and his Alabama football team knocked off Ryan Day and Ohio State in the 2021 national championship game.

However, prior to 2024 College Football Playoff drive for no. 8 Buckeyes (10-2), Saban came to the defense of the embattled coach. Ohio State hosts the No. 9 at Tennessee (10-2) on Saturday at Ohio Stadium with a chance to make a deep playoff run.

But there has been a ton of negativity in the Buckeyes’ fanbase afterward an ugly 13-10 loss to archrival Michigan in “The Game” to end the regular season. As a result of the loss, Ohio State did not play in the Big Ten championship game and did not get a chance at a first-round bye by winning the conference.

Saban delivered a message to Buckeyes fans during ESPN’s “College GameDay” segment, urging them to support Day and help him win OSU’s first national championship since 2014 under Urban Meyer.

“They have an opportunity to win the national championship,” Saban said on “GameDay.” “Everybody should support the hell out of them so they have the best opportunity to do that and stop all this negative bull(speak).”

Saban also praised how Day, who has a 66-10 record with the Buckeyes, has coached Ohio State. Day is just 1-4 against Michigan.

“Every coach has to define how he’s going to do it, and I have a lot of respect for Ryan Day and how he’s tried to do it,” Saban said. “For me, I’ve always wanted to get every player in the organization to reach their full potential. So it wasn’t so much about the result. It was about what you had to do to make everyone better.”

“But a big part of it was isolating the players from outside factors: criticism, the Internet. I used to say to the players all the time, ‘Why do you care about what some guy puts on the Internet who’s a cool guy in his underwear lives in his mother’s basement?'”