Ryan Day worked under Urban Meyer for four seasons — including three as a full-time assistant. After taking over as the head coach at Ohio State, he took those lessons and the mentorship of Meyer with him. But recently, he’s leaning on a key piece of advice when replacing members of his coaching staff.
Day has had to replace his offensive coordinator in each of the last three seasons, and that coincided this year with losing one of the top recruiters on his roster: Brian Hartline. Hartline, who served as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach last season, left to take the head coaching position with USF this offseason.
So what did Day do? He remembered what Meyer told him years ago.
“When you’re at Ohio State you get to go hire the best,” Ryan Day said on The Pat McAfee Show. “I remember one of my first recruiting meetings, I was the quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator and Urban Meyer was the head coach here. And we walked in, and the recruit and the family says, ‘Well, we really like coach Day, but what happens if he leaves?’ I thought coach was going to say, ‘He’s going to be here for a long time, you don’t need to worry about that.’ He just said, ‘We’ll just go get the next best guy out there.’”
Day went out and added Cortez Hankton as the wide receivers coach and Arthur Smith as the OC.
The bigger question was how Hartline’s departure would impact Ohio State’s ability to recruit wide receivers at the level it had for decades. From first-rounder to first-rounder, Ohio State has consistently been known as ‘Wide Receiver U’. The program that had been competing for that title? LSU — and that’s where Hankton had spent the last four years as passing game coordinator, wide receivers coach and then later co-offensive coordinator.
From Jeremiah Smith to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson or Marvin Harrison Jr — Hartline’s pipeline runs deep. Hankton brings the recent success of coaching and developing players like Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas and Kyren Lacy at LSU, now to Columbus.
And add in Arthur Smith as the offensive coordinator, someone who was the former head coach of the Atlanta Falcons and spent 17 years in the NFL, and Ohio State reloaded once again with ‘the next best guy out there’.
“That’s what we had to do,” Day said. “We had to go get the next best guy out there.”
Ohio State began fall camp this week and enters the season ranked No. 1 in the coaches poll, with sky-high expectations and goals for 2026.
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This article originally appeared on Buckeyes Wire: Ohio State coach Ryan Day talks best advice received from Urban Meyer
Reporting by Alec Lasley, Buckeyes Wire / Buckeyes Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Alec Lasley, Buckeyes Wire | USA TODAY Network
