Ryan Day compares today's college football to age of the dinosaurs: 'Either you adapt or you die'

Ryan Day doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands. He’s the head football coach at Ohio State, which boasts one of the most prolific and demanding programs in the game’s collegiate ranks, and he’s tasked with upholding a standard of excellence through a storm of uncertainty that surrounds the sport. Even when he does have a few hours to spare, it’s not hard to imagine why his job is still top of mind.

The college football calendar doesn’t stop for anyone, after all. Day told reporters Tuesday that he recently had some time to kill while traveling for recruiting visits that his son, RJ, was taking as a quarterback in the 2027 cycle. That’s when Day indulged in “The Dinosaurs” documentary on Netflix.

“If you want to feel insignificant, watch that because it talks about how the dinosaurs were on earth like 250 million years ago,” Day said at the podium after spring practice. “Over that time, the world changed, the climate changed, the earth changed. Some dinosaurs figured out how to continue to adapt, and some died.

I guess that's a little extreme, but I think it's kind of the way it is in college football. ” Day said that last part with a bit of a smirk, and the analogy caused the assembled media to break out into laughter. But the eighth-year Buckeyes head coach and one-time national champion was being serious.