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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
ATLANTA — Maybe Ohio State football fans will like coach Ryan Day now.
Fifty-one days after suffering the worst loss of his career, Day guided the No. 8 Buckeyes to their first national championship in 10 years with a 34-23 victory over No. 7 Notre Dame in the CFP National Championship presented by AT&T on Monday night.
The Buckeyes led the Irish 31-7 midway through the third quarter, but the Irish kept fighting and pulled to within one score and a two-point conversion with just more than four minutes remaining.
Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard threw a 34-yard touchdown pass to Jaden Greathouse with 3:03 left in the third and tossed a two-point play to tailback Jeremiyah Love to make it 31-15. Then, after a late defensive stop, Leonard found Greathouse again for a 30-yard touchdown and Beaux Collins converted the two-point attempt to pull the Irish within 31-23 with 4:15 left.
The Buckeyes finally put the Irish away for good when quarterback Will Howard threw a deep ball to freshman Jeremiah Smith, who beat cornerback Christian Gray for a 56-yard gain to the Irish 10. That led to Jayden Fielding‘s 33-yard field goal that put the Buckeyes up 11 with 26 seconds left.
The victory was redemption for Day, whose team fell to rival Michigan, the so-called “School Up North,” for the fourth straight time in a stunning 13-10 defeat at home on Nov. 30. That loss, in which the Buckeyes were 21-point favorites, knocked them out of the Big Ten championship game.
But the defeat didn’t eliminate Ohio State from the first 12-team CFP, and the Buckeyes took down No. 9 Tennessee in the first round, No. 1 Oregon in the quarterfinals and No. 5 Texas in the semifinals before beating the Fighting Irish in their 16th game of the season.
“I say all the time to our players, the first time you got on a bike you didn’t just ride the bike, you fell down, and how quickly did you learn from falling down to get back on the bike to learn to ride a bike?” Day said. “Well, it’s like that in life. You learn from going through difficult times like that.”
That was what made Monday night so special for Day and everyone around him.
“I think he’s done a great job, and I think he understands the weight of what this job is,” Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said this week. “That comes with the territory. He’s shown who he is, and I think he’s done an unbelievable job in that situation.”
Ohio State’s players said Day accepted some of the blame for coming up short against Michigan again. But the shocking defeat might have been exactly what the Buckeyes needed in order to capture the seventh national title in program history.
“We had to address all the issues we had on the team,” Buckeyes defensive tackle Tyleik Williams said. “Everybody spoke up and just fixed those problems that we had. The leadership on this team is like I’ve never seen. That wouldn’t have happened a couple years ago.”
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