Bottled-up pressure bursts sooner or later. For Ryan Day, losing to Michigan is one of the two worst things that happened to him in his life. The other thing is losing his father, Raymond Day. Imagine being just nine years old, walking home from school, and finding cops at your house. He never knew the real cause then. At first he thought it was an accident. It was only a year later that he found out he had taken his own life. And that’s the danger of poor mental health. And that’s where the Ohio State HC got real with it.

“For a young, young person, there’s just so many things going through your mind,” Ryan Day recalled. “You realize that if somebody isn’t telling you what happened, there’s shame surrounding what happened.” Heavy words. For a long time, he wondered why his father would leave three young kids behind. And that’s exactly why he’s speaking out, because too many people still suffer in silence. 

As much as Ryan Day is the face of OSU football, the real MVP of his life might just be his wife, Nina Day. During Mental Health Awareness Month, he opened up on the personal phase of his life in an interview with IMPACT60 on May 16. As a person who’s directly faced tragedy based on mental health issues, he dropped a golden piece of advice while shining light on Nina. “I think it’s important to have a support system in place, having truth tellers,” he said. “We are communal people, and we want to have people around us [who] will tell us the truth. You know, mine is my wife.” 

Most truths are hard to digest, but in a world full of fake sugar-coated praise, it’s those closest to you who give you a piece of unbiased honesty. And yeah, nobody really likes hearing it, just like Ryan Day admitted, “When you don’t want to hear it, she’s going to tell me the truth and look me in the eye.” That’s the power of a loving and supportive partner. Day and his wife grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, a place that didn’t talk about his father’s circumstances or mental health in general. So they get each other. 

The aftermath of Raymond Day’s passing was filled with confusion for the younger Day. “There was a point in my life where I just thought he was just mentally weak,” he admitted. “And then as you get older, you realize that he was [mentally] sick. That, combined with the fact that nobody talked about it [made] my wife and I [realize] that there’s a generation of young people here that don’t need anybody suffering in silence anymore.” And that shift in perspective wasn’t just personal. It was transformational. 

Ryan Day and Nina are in for a good fight

You see, Nina Day is no stranger to mental health setbacks. She walked that same road too. High anxiety derailed her final years in college, forced her to quit basketball, and left her feelings isolated. “I remember just feeling that I was suffering alone,” she admitted back in 2023. “You just couldn’t talk about it back then.” So, together, she and Ryan Day decided to stop whispering and start fighting. 

Through the Kids Mental Health Foundation and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the Days are changing the game. In 2019, they also dropped a $1 million donation through their new Nina and Ryan Day Resilience Fund to the OSU Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine to help fight stigma and push research. Yeah, Ryan Day isn’t just drawing up plays. He’s drawing up hopes too. But it’s not easy given his tight schedule. “It’s very hard to get a room there. Because that’s how busy it is, unfortunately,” he admitted. “We are making progress, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

Ryan Day has faced losses both on and off the field. But he’s a man who refuses to stay down. Instead, he turns pain into purpose for the greater good. And that is one of the highest forms of bravery.