Ohio State has always wanted excellence. From Woody Hayes to Jim Tressel, the Buckeyes’ sidelines are home to massive legends. Ryan Day now joins that line. No, not just in salary, but in the struggle to turn blueblood status into ultimate playoff success. Everything else has, so much so that he has surpassed head coaches like Kirby Smart and Tom Osborne in a key battle.

Ryan Day’s Ohio State is undefeated this season, and no team matches Day’s prowess. Talk about Texas’s elite defense and Ryan Day’s hype? Day showed his superiority in Week 1, winning 14-7. How about Jedd Fisch’s Washington in Seattle? Ryan Day orchestrated a blowout at the Husky Stadium, defeating 24-6. Lastly, in Week 7, Illinois came, ranked in the top 10 nationally. But what did Ryan Day do? Defeated them 34-16 on the road and continued his dominance. All of this has led Day to a crucial juncture in his career.

“Ohio State has been an AP Poll Top 10 team 99% of the time when Ryan Day has been the head coach,” reported the ‘Buckeye Nut’ X account. That puts Day on a unique pedestal: Ohio State has ranked top-10 in 84 out of the 85 games he has coached. He is also significantly ahead of other head coaches like Kirby Smart, Nebraska’s Tom Osborne, and Pete Carroll of USC.

Tom Osborne has seen his team, Nebraska, in the top-10 of the AP polls 84% of the time he has coached games at the program. At the same time, Kirby Smart’s UGA tenure has seen the feat achieved 83% of the time. Barry Switzer, the former Oklahoma head coach, follows at fourth with 79% and Pete Carroll is fifth with 74% of the time. All these head coaches are legends in their own right, making the feat quite special for Ryan Day.

Kirby Smart is the only coach, besides Ryan Day, on the list who is still coaching college football. The head coach is 5-1 in the season and has established a legendary status at UGA on the back of his previous two national championships. Pete Caroll, though, is currently the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders in the NFL and also won the Super Bowl in the 2013 season with the Seattle Seahawks. So, Ryan Day surpassing these well-accomplished head coaches is remarkable, and if his current dominance continues, he can even surpass Kirby Smart in another key battle.

We have all witnessed the dominance Ohio State has achieved under Ryan Day. However, it was always blue blood, as evidenced by Urban Meyer’s tenure before Ryan Day. So winning Natties, sealing Big 10 titles, and most importantly, defeating the team up north is routine for OSU.

Despite this, Ryan Day has not managed to establish dominance over Michigan. That can surely start with this year’s game in November. However, the Buckeyes coach continues to tumble records by surpassing head coaches like Knute Rockne in another key metric.

Five weeks from etching Ryan Day’s name among the greats

Ever since taking over at Ohio State, Ryan Day’s team has lost just 10 times while piling up 71 wins. That puts Day at an 88.2 win percentage, impressive compared to former Notre Dame head coach Knute Rockne. In his tenure at Notre Dame, Rockne compiled a 102-12-5 record, accumulating an  88.1 win percentage. That places Day at the top of the CFB pyramid regarding total win percentage, while Rockne is at a close second.

“When you sign up for this job, that’s what you sign up for. You’ve got to be strong enough to withstand the storms, to come out the back end…I hope we win a lot of games; that’s part of the job at Ohio State. But you want to have a bigger impact than that when you’re done. You want to leave a legacy behind, you want to make a change,” said Ryan Day when asked about his legacy at OSU.

Ohio State will face Wisconsin in a Week 8 battle on the road, followed by Penn State, Purdue, and UCLA. All of these games would be a cakewalk for the Buckeyes since UCLA and Penn State are in transition after the firing of their head coaches. Purdue’s team is under first-year head coach Barry Odom, currently 2-4 in the B1G. Winning all the above games would take Ryan Day ahead of Rockne and finally seal his place in CFB’s halls of glory. For some, he already entered the halls of glory.