Urban Meyer addresses "idiots on social media" when talking about Ohio State HC Ryan Day's situation with haters

Urban Meyer led the Ohio State Buckeyes to a National Championship during the 2014 season. 10 years later, current Buckeyes coach Ryan Day has also led his team to a national championship after a 34-23 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

However, for the past few seasons, Ryan Day has not been an entirely popular figure with fans. Day and Meyer spoke on the latest edition of "The Triple Option " and Meyer pulled no punches on the situation:

"Then, obviously, I coached a long time, and a lot has been made of it and Coach Day and the pressures of coaching at a place like Ohio State. I made the comment that that’s not gonna change. The thing that has got to change and has changed is the idiots on social media that don’t sign their name to stuff.”

The pressure on any coach at a program as big as Ohio State is massive. There is almost an expectation that the team is going to be playing for a national championship every year. Anything shy of that would be considered a failure by a large portion of fans. This was why Ryan Day had been on the receiving end of a lot of online abuse.

Day had never gotten Ohio State to a national championship game (but he did get them to numerous College Football Playoff semi-finals) and did not have a winning record against top-five ranked teams. After the 2024 regular season, Day was 4-6 against these teams, something that led to him receiving more online hate.

Coming into the 2024 College Football Playoff, the picture was looking bleak for Day. His Buckeyes had just suffered a shock defeat to a Michigan Wolverines in a rebuild. The defeat meant that the Buckeyes missed out on the Big Ten Conference Championship game, something that many had expected them to play in and even win at the beginning of the season.

This led to a lot of hate being directed towards Day. However, he was able to ignore it (or use it to fuel the team), and a rapid improvement was seen in the Ohio State team. They dominated their opponents in the first two rounds of the playoff before a last-minute win over the Texas Longhorns gave the Buckeyes a spot in the National championship game.

There, quarterback Will Howard led the Buckeyes as they cruised to a win over Notre Dame for the national championship.

Urban Meyer discusses the impact of hate on his family

Urban Meyer is no stranger to online hate and had experienced it during his time with the Florida Gators. He spoke about the impact it had on his family on "The Triple Option":

"We never got the issues with the losing part but we got the issues with nutjob fans that would say things about my girls or something, and we would have police come 24/7 around the house a few times, just because you’re in the public eye.”

Meyer's Florida Gators were the best program in the country in the middle of the 2000s. Led by quarterback Tim Tebow, Meyer led the Gators to two national championship wins and three SEC Championship games. This level of success put the coach in the public eye.

However, it also put his family in the public sphere. This led to some frightening situations for the family, mostly caused by fans overstepping the line between Urban Meyer, the coach of the Florida Gators, and Urban Meyer, the regular person.