University of New Hampshire Athletics
Ohio State’s Ryan Day: Wildcat Pride
12/27/2019 11:17:00 PM | Football, UNH Insider
Former UNH Quarterback Seeks National Title with Buckeyes
DURHAM, N.H. – Three games, three wins into his career as the fulltime head football coach at The Ohio State University in September, Ryan Day - the pride of Manchester and the University of New Hampshire, and, heck, the entire state of New Hampshire – did the unthinkable.
He wore a blue t-shirt – BLUE, yes, BLUE – into his weekly press conference in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, home of the Buckeye football program.
Blue is taboo, you see, when it comes to Ohio State and athletics and the wearing of it is forbidden in the halls of the Hayes Center. It is after all, the color that represents archrival Michigan.
Ryan Day, to be sure, was in no way flaunting rules or tradition.
His blue shirt paid respect to one of his mentors: "Mac Strong" he shirt said and carried a picture of longtime UNH head coach Sean McDonnell, Day's coach during his Wildcat playing days. McDonnell had announced a few weeks earlier that he was taking a leave of absence from his duties to deal with health issues.
"I just want to let him know we're all thinking about him," Day said. "We love him a lot. I learned what it means to be tough from him. I know what it means to have willpower from him. I know he's fighting this thing with his family. Everybody that was a Wildcat. Everybody that's in the UNH family and also my family, Nina and the kids, everybody in my family is thinking about that and they love him. I know he's going to beat this thing."
And the blue t-shirt part?
"It's New Hampshire blue," Ryan Day said matter-of-factly.
He did not name that other school.
THE LEADER
The color of more immediate concern to Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day is orange. Clemson orange.
His No. 2 seeded Buckeyes and the No. 3 Clemson Tigers battle in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., on Saturday, Dec. 28, with some mighty large stakes. The winner advances to the national championship game on Jan. 13 in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans and will face the winner of the other semifinal between No. 1 seed Louisiana State University and No. 4 Oklahoma State.
Clemson, like Ohio State, has a perfect record at 13-0. The Tigers, led by coach Dabo Swinney, also happen to be defending national champions and have won two of the last three national titles.
It's a steep, steep challenge: The kind of test the kid from Manchester eagerly embraces. Always has.
Ryan Day has been embracing challenges since he was a 6-year-old teammate in t-ball of Christina Spirou, who is now his wife. He embraced them as a football quarterback, basketball point guard and baseball catcher at Manchester Central High School and embraced them again when McDonnell and Chip Kelly, two of his many mentors, recruited him to play football at UNH under then head coach Bill Bowes.
"He was always a smart guy, a smart kid," McDonnell said. "I'm talking from his junior year in high school when we first saw him in Londonderry at a one-day clinic and saw his understanding of corner reads and two-deep and stuff like that. It's like, 'Wow.' Chip and I would just be looking at each other: 'Hey, this is pretty good.'"
By sophomore year, McDonnell had replaced the retired Bowes as head coach at UNH and Kelly had been promoted to offensive coordinator and Day beat out an older player for the starting job at quarterback.
He impressed from the start.
"Ryan in the huddle has a presence about him when he calls a play and how he delivers it," said Brian Mallette, Day's roommate, classmate and one of his favorite targets as a UNH wide receiver. "You have this sense that he's going to do everything in his power to make happen what needs to happen. There's no panic in the huddle."
There's more.
"As soon as he delivers the play, he adds a little more," Mallette said. "To a lineman, it might be make sure you pick up the blitz. To me, 'Brian, make sure you get to the first down stick on the comeback. He knows the most important things about the play. If the blitz is not picked up, he's dead. If the wide receiver gets eight yards and we need nine, it's over. With a lot of stuff going on, all the things that need to happen, he's able to think forward. He was always like that."
The attention to detail. The calm, no-panic approach. The determination to do what it takes to succeed, to win.
Ryan Day lives, and thrives, by those themes.
THE COMPETITOR
Day has always had the competitive side covered, said Stan Spirou, the former and highly successful basketball coach at Southern New Hampshire University, who knows a thing or two about fiery competitors.
Spirou, as the father of Christina – Nina to most – Day also happens to be Ryan's father-in-law and one who has known him longer than many, since those t-ball days.
"On the golf course, when he plays cards, Ryan plays to win," Spirou said. "He plays for keeps, tries to figure out angles on how to win. On the golf course, he's most dangerous when he's down two or three holes and you think you have him beat. The next thing you know he's even."
Like against Wisconsin in the Big 10 championship game on Dec. 7. The Buckeyes trailed 21-7 at the half.
"There was never any panic on the sidelines," said Spirou, who attended the game. "They went into the locker room and came back like a whole different team. That rubs off on his players. He doesn't panic. He doesn't try to do anything out of the ordinary. He trusts his instincts."
Like against the University of Delaware 19 years earlier, in perhaps UNH's greatest football comeback win.
The Wildcats trailed the No. 2 team in the country, 31-3 and on the road, late in the third period that day.
The Wildcats ran for a couple of touchdowns to close out the third period and Day passed for three touchdowns in the fourth period alone. He connected with Mallette for another in overtime and when Shawn MacLean kicked the conversion UNH had a 45-44 victory.
Day completed 37 of 65 passes for 426 yards and four TDs for the game.
"He was just relentless moving the ball down the down the field," Mallette said. "We were going to go, go, go and we were not going to be stopped. Chip had that mentality that day and Ryan fed off it and the rest of us fed off that. It was very much no panic. He's very good at that."
Two weeks later, UNH's rivalry game at Maine did not go as well. The Wildcats were in a deep hole again and this time there was no pulling out of it and they lost 52-10. But not before Day had a say in how he felt about things.
"They're kicking our tails late and they're still blitzing us," McDonnell said with a laugh. "Ryan takes the ball and zips a bee-line right over the defensive coordinator's head. He wasn't happy and he let him know he wasn't happy."
Yes, fiery and competitive. On the football field. On all sorts of fields.
Mallette tells of the time he and Day and teammate Frankie Smith were walking by the Whittemore Center at UNH and a wiffleball tournament was about to start. They decided to enter.
The only problem was, they were supposed to be headed out to meet a bunch of people for the weekend to go skiing.
"We got started and Ryan decided we're going to win this thing," Mallette said. "Ryan's diving all over the floor and once it gets rolling it's no longer just fun, it's a competitive thing. We won and got intramural championship t-shirts. But a lot of people weren't happy with us. We got up to the ski house about four hours late."
THE TIME IS NOW
McDonnell and Spirou are perhaps most impressed with how Ryan Day is handling one of the most high-profile jobs in all of college football – it came with five-year contract at $4.5 million a year - in his first fulltime duties as a head coach.
He did, it should be noted, come into the season with a 3-0 record as a head coach after filling in for the first three games of last year for Urban Meyer on an interim basis.
"I knew from knowing the kid, the confidence, the self-confidence the kid had that he was ready," McDonnell said. "But as in everything Ryan's ever done when he's been around me, he's gone above and beyond what I thought he was going to be. He's that much better. You watch him talking to the press. You watch him on game day talking to the crowds. He's unbelievable. He's talking to the crowd about how the team needs them."
Day's coaching resume is lengthy and impressive. He worked at UNH as tight ends coach just out of school in 2002. He's done three stints at Boston College, working his way up the ladder each time. He's been at Temple a couple of times. At Florida. He was the quarterbacks coach with the Eagles in 2015 under Kelly and the next year coached under him again as quarterbacks coach with the 49ers.
He joined Meyer's staff in 2017 and served two years as offensive coordinator before getting the top job for this season.
Urban Meyer. Steve Addazio, the former Boston College coach now at Colorado State. Chip Kelly, another Manchester guy, now the head coach at UCLA.
"Ryan's a confident person and rightfully so," McDonnell said. "He absorbs an awful lot of stuff. I think you have to have a high want-to. You've got to be smart. And you've got to be observant. Ryan was soaking it all up. He's like a sponge."
McDonnell credits the job Lisa Day, Ryan's mother, did in raising Ryan. Spirou had a role. As did others along the way such as Manchester Central coaches including Mike Fitzpatrick in basketball and Jim Schubert in football.
"His first rodeo, on the biggest stage, he's been unbelievable, very mature," Spirou said. "There's no doubt there's pressure. You can see it when you go to practice, when you go to the office. But once he comes home, he leaves it at the door. That takes a lot of maturity. What I'm impressed with and most proud of is the way he's handled the pressure."
He's another in a long line of coaches descending from Bowes and McDonnell who are making their mark, noted UNH director of athletics Marty Scarano.
"It's just a really great addition to what's become a very impressive coaching legacy from UNH," Scarano said. "It's just been a really, really fabulous legacy that all of these gentlemen have added to. It starts with Bill Bowes and it runs through all of us at UNH. It certainly runs through Sean McDonnell. It's a great tribute to all of these men. They're really giants in the coaching profession."
Day's honoring of McDonnell in September moved Scarano.
"What he did wearing the Mac Strong shirt, wearing blue in Columbus for a press conference, nobody at UNH will ever forget that," Scarano said. "That was just a very, very class act."
So yes, the Buckeyes - and especially their head coach – have some new, New Hampshire-based fans, these days.
"He's one of us," McDonnell said. "He's a New Hampshire kid. He's Manchester with Chip and (Florida coach) Danny Mullen, but he's also UNH with Chip and us. You have a great sense of pride when you talk to people and they say, 'You know him?' Yeah, we know him. A little bit.' He's doing a helluva job, man."
