A day after Ohio State football’s national championship celebration in Columbus, coach Ryan Day took his talents to Hollywood.
Day, who ended his sixth season as the Buckeyes head coach with his first national championship win, was a guest on “The Tonight Show” on Monday night. Day spoke with Jimmy Fallon about Ohio State’s College Football Playoff run, with the CFP trophy on display in the background.
“Yesterday we had a huge celebration in the stadium,” Day said. “We had over 45,000 fans there. That’s really when it sunk in because just the hard work and the journey we went on to get there. This is the first time we’ve had the 12-team format in the playoffs, so 16 games. There were ups and downs along the way, but our guys showed resilience. To hoist that trophy with everybody there meant a lot.”
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Day was also asked about ripping his headset off and chucking it as far as he could, along with receiving a Gatorade bath in celebration of the game. Fallon showed a clip of both celebratory moments on the show.
“First off, when you’re at the end of the game, you’re so close,” Day said. “You just want to see it end. It’s a two-score game, you want to see that’s it. And then all of a sudden when you realize you won, it’s like, ‘get this headset off me.’ I’m lucky I didn’t hit somebody in the crowd because there’s weight on that too. and then I turned around and I forgot about the Gatorade bath because you’re not thinking about any of those things. They surprised me with it, and it was a great feeling.”
Day has a 70-10 record as a head coach at Ohio State, with a 6-4 bowl record and 5-4 CFP record. The two-time Big Ten champion became the third active head coach in college football to hoist the CFP trophy after beating Notre Dame 34-23 in Atlanta.
Fallon has been the host of “The Tonight Show” since 2014, as the former “Saturday Night Live!” star took over for former host Conan O’Brien.
Day, near the end of his interview, was even reminded about his viral moment after the championship, when the golf cart he and a few other Ohio State players were traveling in, crashed into the wall at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“It’s just amazing how you come right back down to earth 20 minutes after that,” Day said. “… We’re in an Austin Powers movie right now.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Look: Ryan Day appears on ‘The Tonight Show’ with Jimmy Fallon
