Chris Holtmann was fired on Wednesday in the middle of his seventh season as head coach of the Ohio State basketball program. It was a bad hire that was exacerbated by a bad extension. It was the first time Gene Smith had fired an Ohio State football or basketball coach in the middle of the season.
Holtmann clearly needed to go and it was the right move to let him go. The Buckeyes don’t have a history of making bad hires in either football or basketball, but there still have been some bad ones. Holtmann’s firing got us thinking about the bad Ohio State football hires.
Looking back through history, none of the hires have been truly terrible. All of the coaches I’m about to list had some success at some point. They just didn’t win at the absolute highest level necessary to be a great coach with the Buckeyes.
There are three coaches that fit this criteria. This list will go from the third-worst hire all the way to the worst one. The first coach on this list happens to be the current one.
3. Ryan Day, Ohio State football coach 2019-present
Ryan Day is on the hot seat this year. There’s no question about that. If you look at his resumé, all of his big wins have come with Urban Meyer’s players. He has two Big Ten titles with those guys. Since those guys left, he hasn’t even made it to Indianapolis.
