Nick Saban and his Alabama football team took down Ryan Day and Ohio State in the 2021 national championship game.
However, ahead of the 2024 College Football Playoff run for the No. 8 Buckeyes (10-2), Saban came to the defense of the embattled coach. Ohio State hosts No. 9 Tennessee (10-2) on Saturday at Ohio Stadium with a chance to make a deep playoff run.
But there has been a ton of negativity in the Buckeyes’ fanbase after an ugly 13-10 loss to archrival Michigan in ‘The Game’ to end the regular season. As a result of the loss, Ohio State did not play in the Big Ten championship game and didn’t get a chance at a first-round bye by winning the conference.
Saban delivered a message to Buckeyes fans during ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ segment, urging them to support Day and help him win Ohio State’s first national championship since 2014 under Urban Meyer.
‘They have an opportunity to win the national championship,’ Saban said on ‘GameDay.’ ‘Everybody oughta be supporting the hell outta them so they have the best opportunity to do it and quit all this negative bull(expletive).’
Saban also praised how Day, who has a 66-10 record with the Buckeyes, has coached Ohio State. Day is just 1-4 against Michigan.
‘Every coach has to define how he wants to do it and I have a lot of respect for Ryan Day and how he’s tried to do it,’ Saban said. ‘For me, I always wanted to get every player in the organization to reach his full potential. So it wasn’t so much about the outcome. It was about what you had to do to make everyone better.’
‘But a big part of that was insulating the players from external factors: criticism, internet. I used to tell the players all the time, ‘Why do you care about what some guy puts on the internet, who is a fat guy in his underwear living in his mother’s basement?”