Michigan 13, Ohio State 10 (November 30). A fourth straight loss to Michigan; the program's darkest moment of the Day tenure. The internal response — not the firing, the re-commitment — became the CFP run's ignition.
2024 — Title Back in Columbus
Ohio State won the national championship behind a first-year Ryan Day recalibration of the roster and a Jeremiah Smith freshman season that reshaped what a receiver could do.
The Shape — week-by-week · cumulative W–L below
Who carried it
- Will HowardQB4,010 passing yards
- Quinshon JudkinsRB1,060 rushing yards
- TreVeyon HendersonRB1,016 rushing yards
- Jeremiah SmithWR1,315 receiving yards
- Emeka EgbukaWR1,011 receiving yards
- Carnell TateWR733 receiving yards
- Cody SimonLB112 tackles
- Sonny StylesLB100 tackles
- Caleb DownsS81 tackles
- J.T. TuimoloauDE12.5 sacks
- Jack SawyerDE9 sacks
- Ty HamiltonDT3.5 sacks
Season leaders, 2024.
CFP quarterfinal over Oregon 41-21; semifinal over Texas 28-14. Will Howard's poise; Jeremiah Smith's freshman-season dominance; the defense's re-calibrated approach after the Michigan loss.
National championship over Notre Dame 34-23. Smith's fourth-quarter diving catch; Howard's 13th touchdown pass of the CFP run. Ohio State's ninth title (or eighth, depending on count); the first since 2014.
"The Michigan loss was the reason. Don't ask me to unpack that."
2024 is the chapter where Ohio State converted a decade of Day-era near-misses into a national title, and it did so with the specific kind of roster and scheme that the program had been building toward since the 2014 championship. Jeremiah Smith's freshman season is a recruiting-pipeline argument the 2025-2028 rosters will cite. The Michigan-game inflection is a program-internal memory that shapes how the decade is read. The chapter closes the Day era's question: could he win it? He did.