Ryan Day's reaction to Oregon loss shows that he still doesn't get it—and probably never will

The problem with Ohio State's last-second defeat to Oregon on Saturday wasn't that the Buckeyes lost; falling to a top-three team by a single point in a raucous road environment is hardly unforgivable, especially considering how close Ohio State was to flipping the outcome. The problem is that, well, Ryan Day's team has been close an awful lot over the past few years — and every time, the script has been the same.

A well-regarded Ohio State defense looks a lot less impactful against a team that can match its talent; Ohio State's offense makes a big mistake that short-circuits a critical drive; and Day's clock and game management put his team at a disadvantage. We saw it in all three losses to Michigan, we saw it in the College Football Playoff against Clemson and Georgia and we saw it again in Eugene on Saturday night. The names change, but throughout Day's tenure in Columbus, the song has remained the same.

It's enough to drive any Buckeye crazy ... except for Day himself, apparently. And that really sums up the whole problem with this program right now.

Ryan Day says loss to Oregon 'not a wake-up call'

Day met with the media for the first time this week, and naturally he was asked about how his team has responded to its first loss of the season. His answer, however, should be concerning to every Ohio State fan: Day said that the loss to Oregon was "not a wake-up call," and reiterating that the plan is to stay the course.

Day later acknowledged that some things needed to change. We gotta find a way to win the game in the fourth quarter," he said. "We gotta take care of the football. We gotta win the rushing yards. We gotta hold them to less explosives than we did. We've got other things that we gotta clean up as well.”

All of which is well and good; the Buckeyes do indeed need to work on all of those things and more. But exactly what evidence is there at this point that Day is the man to make that happen? He's in the middle of year six in Columbus, and while the overall record looks gaudy, his track record against elite teams — in other words, Ohio State's peers — is defined by doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result.

In other words, maybe the Oregon loss should be a wake-up call: It's easy to point at all the little things that could've broken Ohio State's way and changed the outcome, but how many times does the same game have to play out before Day becomes the common denominator? Day's now 1-7 against top-five opponents, and it doesn't seem as though that ugly record has caused him to change anything about his preparation or routine. For all the returning talent, all the splashy transfer additions, this Ohio State team looks like all the others under Day. And if the seventh loss wasn't enough to convince him that maybe some different emphasis was required, clearly the eighth or ninth won't either,