Ohio State fans should know well the name Larry Coker. He was the defensive backs coach at Ohio State in 1993 and 1994.
Coker eventually wound up at Miami and when Butch Davis was hired away from the Hurricanes by the Cleveland Browns in 2001, Coker, a career assistant with no track record as a head coach, was handed the reins to the most dominant program in college football.
His very first season he led Miami to the 2001 national championship with one of the greatest teams in the history of the sport.
The next season Coker again went 12-0 with the consensus No. 1 team in the country. That’s when he ran into Jim Tressel’s Ohio State squad at the Fiesta Bowl. Miami committed five turnovers and lost in double overtime, despite Coker’s defense allowing no scoring drive longer than 25 yards, and that came in each overtime.
Yet that 31-24 decision signaled the end of Miami’s dynasty.
Coker’s 2003 team went 11-2, followed by seasons of 9-3, 9-3 and 7-6, when he was finally shown the door after the 2006 campaign. Miami, and Coker, never recovered from that Fiesta Bowl loss to Ohio State, and the Hurricanes have not been a national factor since.
Larry Coker had no experience as a head coach, but the Hurricanes wrung a national title out of him and 24 consecutive wins to start his career before he ran the program into the ditch.
Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to Ohio State fans?
It should, because it’s a fair question to ask after career assistant Ryan Day has run completely through Urban Meyer’s recruits, and been routed twice in a row by Michigan, a team Meyer never lost to while compiling a 7-0 record during his sterling career at Ohio State.
Day had no previous head coaching experience before being handed the keys here, and Ohio State is a nearly impossible place to make a head coaching debut.
The New Hampshire native was the offensive coordinator for Temple in 2012, and then at Boston College in 2013 and 2014. He was hired as the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterbacks coach in 2015, but was canned when coach Chip Kelly got the axe. Kelly moved on to the 49ers with Day in tow for one season, then landed at Ohio State under Meyer in 2017. Day worked as offensive coordinator under Meyer for two years before landing the big job in Columbus.
That’s his entire coaching resume.
Day’s coaching career eerily mirrors Coker’s, save for the latter winning a national championship. But a new wrinkle was added on Day’s side of the equation on Saturday.
Just a year after getting blown out at Michigan 42-27 (despite being a double-digit favorite), with the Wolverines’ coaching staff taunting the Buckeyes as being a soft program, Day’s team followed up by getting hammered 45-23 in Columbus, repeat in Columbus.
Again the Buckeyes were more than a TD favorite, and again they were absolutely dominated in the second half. In 2021, the Wolverines outscored the Buckeyes 28-14. In 2022, coach Jim Harbaugh’s team destroyed the Buckeyes 28-3 in the second half.
It’s a troubling pattern, but certainly not the only dubious first or historical reference that has come calling while falling to 1-2 against Michigan.
— The 45 points Day’s team allowed to the Wolverines on Saturday at the Horseshoe were the most given up to the arch-rival in Columbus since Paul Bixler got smoked 58-6 in 1946 — 76 years ago.
— Day has become the first Ohio State coach to lose back-to-back games to Michigan since John Cooper turned the trick in 1999-2000. Cooper was fired after that 2000 season.
— Day has become the first Buckeye coach to have a losing record against Michigan with at least three shots at the rival since Cooper, who went 2-10-1. We’ll give Luke Fickell a pass for his 40-34 loss in 2011, but his team showed a helluva lot more fight in Ann Arbor during that 6-7 season than either of Day’s last two Ohio State outfits did, who were allegedly top-5 units.
— Day tied for the worst loss to Michigan in Columbus since the 1976 squad lost 22-0 to Bo Schembechler’s club. That game was much closer, and Woody Hayes’ team won a share of the Big Ten title that year before pounding Big 8 champion Colorado in the ensuing Orange Bowl.
— Day’s latest quarterback, C.J. Stroud, has become king of the empty stat line. He also became the first Buckeye signal-caller since Steve Bellisari in 1999-2000 to have a losing record against Michigan, while dropping back-to-back games to the Wolverines.
None of those items are something anyone wants to hang on a resume.
While one Ohio State blogger laughably insisted rivalry games are meaningless in today’s era of the college football playoff (no clue if that’s the ghost account of a Ryan Day relative), the fact is rivalry games are the essence of the sport. They determine coaching fates every year, conference championships and even playoff berths.
They mean EVERYTHING in the sport. And Ohio State-Michigan is the most meaningful of them all.
Ohio State took a monster gamble in hiring Ryan Day with no head coaching pedigree whatsoever. Day inherited an incredible infrastructure under Meyer that routinely ranked in the top 5 of the nation, dominated the Big Ten, and completely controlled the rivalry. Meyer’s final team went 13-1, won the Big Ten, won the Rose Bowl, and pounded No. 4 Michigan 62-39, despite being an underdog.
Day was given Meyer’s coaching and support staff, stacked recruiting classes, and managed to keep things between the guardrails for a couple of seasons.
But now left to his own devices, Day has ceded the rivalry to Michigan, lost control of the Big Ten East Division, and indeed is no longer able to get his team to the conference championship game in Indianapolis. One could argue it would be nice to see the Buckeyes be competitive against the Wolverines next year, but that seems a tall task based on recent history.
Who likes Ohio State’s chances in Ann Arbor next year with a first-year QB and a well-earned reputation of softness against Michigan?
The ghost of Larry Coker is the ghost of seasons past. Is it visiting Ohio State right now?
It’s a scary thought that should have Buckeye fans shuddering like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve.
