MANCHESTER, N.H. — On the corner of Brook and Elm on the outskirts of downtown in New Hampshire’s largest city sits Pappy’s Pizza, a culinary institution in this working-class town since 1982.
It’s the type of place a family can order a large pepperoni pizza and a round of Cokes for under $20 and enjoy the fellowship of their neighbors. Ryan Day frequented the restaurant as a high schooler and, when he was named Ohio State’s coach, the marquee out front read, “Congratulations Central’s Ryan Day Ohio State head coach.”
“He was always in here,” said Pappy’s Pizza co-owner Scott Pappas. “It’s huge. It’s pretty amazing, actually. I’ve watched his success all the way through.”
Eleven booths, five tables, five bar stools, and one flat screen television populate Pappy’s. And every seat will be occupied on 11 Saturdays and one Friday this fall, with the TV locked in on Columbus or some other Big Ten locale.
Pappy’s is the unofficial Ohio State bar in a city that is 810 miles from Ohio Stadium, inside the borders of the 10th-least populated state, and in a region that shuns college athletics. But with a favorite son in charge, Manchester is taking on a decidedly scarlet and gray tint.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Pappas said. “Ohio State will be on all the time.”
The Blade traveled to this New England outpost and conducted nearly a dozen interviews with friends, family, former teammates and teachers, and the mayor to capture in detail how Day’s formative years at Manchester Central High School shaped his leadership qualities, how a keen understanding of the game of football led to acclaim at the University of New Hampshire and foreshadowed his coaching future, and the path he took to arguably the premier job in college football.
Big Man on Campus
The pages of the 1997 edition of the Aglaia, Manchester Central’s yearbook, are decorated with images of Day, one of which touts him as the most athletic member of the senior class. The intelligence and leadership he displayed at Central and the University of New Hampshire have carried over into his coaching career. The qualities were not learned or ingrained into Day by a coach or teacher. He was born with them, and exhibited the traits on the playground.
When he was 9, Day began attending Stan Spirou’s basketball camp at Southern New Hampshire University. It didn’t take Spirou long to understand that Day was different than the rest of the kids.
“He was always mentally prepared,” said Spirou, who won 640 games in 33 seasons at Southern New Hampshire and is Day’s father-in-law. “You knew he had coaching acumen in him at a young age. He always wanted to be the catcher in baseball and the quarterback in football. He wasn’t the point guard, but he would always handle the ball late in basketball games. He wasn’t always the most skilled kid, but he had that presence, an athletic IQ where he knew where everyone was supposed to be.”
Day grew up in a competitive household, the oldest of three boys. He was just nine years old when his father died, thrusting him into a man-of-the-house role and accelerating the maturation process. The bond with his brothers, Chris and Tim, extended to athletics, a familial competition always nearby with an inevitable disagreement just around the corner.
“Fiery competitor,” former Central coach Jim Schubert said to describe Day, who quarterbacked the Little Green to a state championship.
Day was named New Hampshire’s Gatorade player of the year in football and earned all-state honors in three sports — football, basketball, and baseball. Even before he roamed the halls at Central, Day’s name was well known in the mill city of 100,000.
“He was always in the newspaper and we heard all about him,” said Matt Pinkos, who captained the football team with Day. “He was always a great athlete, always a great leader. Won a lot of games. Even back then, he was way ahead of the game, assessing the defense, rerouting everyone, and then snapping the ball.”
“He was outstanding,” said Central offensive coordinator Steve Schubert, who played six seasons in the NFL. “When you can take a high school kid and allow him to call the play at the line of scrimmage, it doesn’t get any better than that. He was just a smart kid. He wanted to win all the time, no matter what. He just excelled at everything he did.”
A capacity to succeed, a likability among peers and adults, and a dose of ingenuity paved a yellow brick road to prosperity for Day.
“The consistent message that you hear is that he is a true leader and has been since Day 1,” Manchester mayor Joyce Craig said in her office atop city hall. “He knows how to motivate people, how to bring out the best in people, and how to encourage people. Those are wonderful attributes.”
‘He’s the fiercest competitor I’ve ever been around’
Christina Day’s first memories of her husband are ones of annoyance and irritation.
During recess in elementary school, a young Ryan Day would set the parameters for football, often shouting about plays and certainly paying no attention to the girl who would become his wife two decades later.
“I just remember being really annoyed by him because he would take up half the playground with his game and be annoyed if anyone else wouldn't want to be a part of it,” the former Christina Spirou, who goes by Nina, said. “I remember looking over with my friend and being like, ugh. They would literally plow us over if we got in the way.”
Nina and Ryan became friends as children playing on the same T-ball team, which began a love of sports for the pair. Nina, who’s one year older than Ryan, starred on the Central girls’ basketball team and attended St. Michael’s College in Vermont to play the sport before transferring to UNH.
At the forefront of their relationship is competitiveness.
“When we were dating and playing mini golf, he would always beat me,” Nina said. “When he plays with the kids in the yard, he always beats them. He just doesn’t lose. He’s the fiercest competitor I’ve ever been around.
“I’m competitive, but I’m not crazy. I can take a loss a lot better than him. But we had some battles on the basketball court and playing mini golf. We still find ways to compete. That’s just our nature. He grew up that way with his two brothers. That's how he survived. That's his makeup, his brand.”
An epic comeback and record-setting career
Nov. 4, 2000, is a day that lives in New Hampshire football lore.
The Wildcats, quarterbacked by Day with Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator, trailed 31-3 at No. 2 Delaware with just over 16 minutes remaining. When the game ended, with New Hampshire winning 45-44 in overtime, Day had set Delaware Stadium records for completions (37) and attempts (65), throwing for 426 yards and four touchdowns.
When Day graduated from New Hampshire following the 2001 season, he owned nine school records. And they didn’t occur because he was a prodigious talent destined for stardom. Day is a former walk-on.
UNH coach Sean McDonnell, two decades later, vividly recalls Kelly barking orders during a 7-on-7 drill and Day, displaying moxie, following directions with precision and authority.
“He was a New Hampshire kid who got an opportunity,” McDonnell said sitting behind his desk in UNH Field House. “I watched him grow and become the kid, the leader, and the football player that he was capable of through a lot of hard work. You knew he was in charge. The guys loved him. They wanted to follow him because they knew he would lead us.”
It didn’t hurt that Day took care of his offensive linemen, providing a home-cooked meal every Thursday courtesy of his mother, Lisa.
Day had a voracious appetite for football. He consumed the sport in bunches, watching games, reading the playbook, conversing with coaches. At the turn of the 21st century, creativity and football were in the beginning stages of what is now a fruitful relationship. Coaches were overly conservative, eschewing fourth-down play calls, punting in their own territory, and keeping the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust ethos alive.
Kelly and tiny UNH changed the game, installing formations never seen before and upping the tempo to something that resembled basketball and a track meet. Day played a role as player and coach.
“He was a sponge,” McDonnell said. “He wanted to soak everything in. He was a quick learner and an active learner.”
A budding coaching career
Jim Schubert always envisioned a dapper Day in a suit having a distinguished career as a businessman. And, if he became a football coach, the Ivy League seemed like a plausible landing spot.
Day earned a business degree from UNH, and he quickly embarked on a coaching career after McDonnell tabbed him as tight ends coach in 2002. Over the past 16 years, Day has coached at an FCS program, served as a graduate assistant, spent two seasons in the NFL, and now occupies one of the most coveted jobs in the sport.
“It’s rare that you have the opportunity to create a succession plan where you have the right person in place,” Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said. “Any CEO in the public or private environment, you hope that you have that opportunity. So we were fortunate. We recognized the talent that Ryan Day had early on.”
Meyer became acquainted with Day at Florida in 2005. The 26-year-old G.A. spent time working with the offense, spending countless hours alongside Meyer, offensive coordinator Dan Mullen, a fellow Manchester native, and tight ends coach Steve Addazio.
“You could tell he was really good,” Meyer said. “He didn't stick around long. He got a full-time coaching job [at Temple]. Excellent coach. I could tell back then.”
Day also got an introduction into the demands of major college football — getting married one day and reporting to Florida’s practice the next. Self-belief, plaudits from the coaching fraternity, and a wife who understood the job requirements kept Day afloat. And he’s never once put himself before his family, which includes three kids, R.J., Grace, and Nia.
“Probably the best way to put it is he’s a family man first, football coach second,” Spirou said. “Every decision he makes is family first. When you see him away from the field, away from the office, the interaction he has with his family and those around him is his No. 1 trait.”
When Meyer brought Day to Ohio State in 2017, it marked the family’s third move in three years. The stress, which included two cross-country moves, was enough that husband and wife had conversations about a different career path. Ultimately, Nina knew Ryan yearned to coach.
“I think what Ryan learned the most from my father was to always put family first,” Nina said. “We probably could have been on the rollercoaster with [my dad], but we never wanted to move.
“When Ryan’s turn came, he made sure Ryan took advantage of those opportunities because he didn’t. He saw that Ryan had all the tools to make sure myself and the kids would always be taken care of and never sacrifice anything. Never for a second do I think any of this comes over our family. In a second, he’d give it all up for our family.”
Awaiting his biggest challenge
Ryan Day will run out of the southeast corner of Ohio Stadium on Aug. 31 and lead the Buckeyes into a mass of humanity, with 105,000 fans screaming in feverish anticipation of yet another season brimming with high expectations.
But it won’t be the first or even the second time Day’s emerged from the home tunnel with Ohio State in pursuit. He begins his head-coaching career with a 3-0 record after guiding OSU as acting head coach amid Meyer’s three-game suspension last year. The turbulent month was a preview of what Day and Nina can expect for years to come.
“I think it helped him tremendously because he had to juggle so many different things under unordinary circumstances,” Nina said. “For myself and the kids as well, we got a taste of being behind the scenes and getting thrust out there and how to manage it. I’m a very private person — extremely private — and I guard my kids. All of this is extremely overwhelming.”
In Day’s two seasons as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, the Buckeyes thrived, compiling a 25-3 record, two Big Ten championships, two victories over Michigan, wins in the Rose and Cotton Bowls, and a Heisman Trophy finalist at quarterback.
“Is there an A++ in the gradebook?” quarterback Dwayne Haskins quipped when asked to grade Day’s coaching.
Over the summer, the Days will return to New Hampshire, their happy place. Whether it’s visiting family in Manchester or relishing the beaches in Hampton, there’s comfort in the Granite State, where they can visit with their support system and rejuvenate.
“We take a lot of pride in Manchester and New Hampshire,” Nina said. “We’ll always go back and give back. We’re both really proud that everyone’s so happy. [Ryan is] just a big part of the community. It’s not like when he goes back to Manchester he won’t go to Pappy’s, he will.”
First Published February 8, 2019, 6:23 p.m.
