Emotional meeting after Michigan loss helped Ohio State refocus for championship run — 'There was crying frustration. Anger.'

ATLANTA — Jack Sawyer remembers exactly where he was the afternoon of Tuesday, Dec. 3.

He’ll never forget it. Neither will Josh Fryar. Emeka Egbuka too. And Jeremiah Smith.

In fact, the entire Ohio State football team — more than 100 players — gathered in the team room on that Tuesday for an emotionally charged, sometimes heated, three-hour affair where grievances were aired, blame was accepted and tears were shed.

“I recall it being one of the toughest days of my football life,” said Fryar, a fifth-year senior offensive tackle. “You saw every raw emotion from every single player.”

Almost all of them talked, at least a couple from each position group. The only coach in the room, Ryan Day, talked too.

Still reeling over a home loss as 21-point favorites to rival Michigan just three days before, Day weeped at times, described his missteps and actually accepted some of the blame: “I messed up,” he told players, Fryar said.

“Guys got stuff off their chest,” Sawyer said. “As competitors, guys were mad about a bunch of different things. We talked it out like grown men. We knew we had to come together and go chase this thing. And here we are, a month and a half later, playing for a national championship.”

That they are. The Buckeyes arrived in Atlanta on Friday and attended the game’s annual media day on Saturday morning near the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, all of them in their white CFP sweatsuits.

The Buckeyes’ march here, so predictable at the start of the season, seemed so implausible just six weeks ago. Despite having perhaps the richest roster payroll in college football ($20 million), Ohio State stumbled across a slew of games in the regular season: the defense got gashed at Oregon in October; a gimpy offense limped to a narrow win over Nebraska; the team barely survived at Penn State; and then, in the stunner of the year in the sport, the Wolverines won 13-10 in Columbus.

Since then, it’s been a magical ride — one that so many expected in August from a loaded roster.

They trounced the SEC’s third-best team, Tennessee. They bashed Big Ten champion Oregon in a Rose Bowl rematch. And then they handled Texas in the Longhorns' backyard at the Cotton Bowl.

Now, despite two losses, they are here, the favorite to win the first-ever expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff in Monday's championship game against Notre Dame — something that would not have happened in the four-team structure.

Perhaps it doesn’t happen without that meeting either.

“Everybody spoke what they think is right and wrong,” said Jeremiah Smith, the all-star freshman wideout. “It definitely got emotional. I can’t say what everybody said. But stuff was said that people took and … that’s the reason we are playing the way we are right now.”

What was said exactly?

No one will say specifically.

“I won’t get into the details. It’s a private matter between me and my team,” Egbuka said. “We were able to hash out everything that’s been built up in our hearts.”

Like what exactly?

“Everyone was mad,” said defensive lineman Tyleik Williams. “Each [position] group stepped up and talked about how they were going to do better.”

Was this an offense-versus-defense spat? Maybe.

“There was frustration from both sides of the ball,” Fryar said. “There was crying frustration. Anger. Everything you could name. You want to see those raw emotions from people. It shows they care. That’s what our team is about.”

No one was more emotional than Day, the 45-year-old coach who, despite losing just 10 games in six seasons, is at the center of local and national criticism in Ohio — so much that he pulled his own children from school after one of the last four losses to Michigan. That’s according to a post on the Players’ Tribune from Sawyer.

It wasn’t only fellow classmates threatening Day’s children. It was their parents and “actual teachers as well,” Sawyer said.

“His family has received death threats,” Egbuka said. “He’s received death threats.”

In that Dec. 3 meeting, Day didn’t only take blame for his handling of play calls, strategy and preparation against Michigan. He leveled with players. In general, he just hasn’t been good enough, he told them.

“Him just looking at us and being like, ‘I messed up,’” Fryar said.

“You don’t see too often where a head coach might take the blame or a head coach might really listen to his players and what they’ve got to say,” said safety Lathan Ransom. “That’s what he did.”

Day sidesteps revealing too much about the meeting inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, often called the “Woody.” It was intense and it was long. His players voiced their frustrations, at one another and at him, too.

Some day, at some point, he’ll share those stories, talk about them publicly on the record — if Monday goes well.

The “only way” these stories get told, Day said, is if Ohio State completes this success tale and beats Notre Dame to win it all.

“There's some great stories to be told about what went on behind closed doors and some of the things that were said and the personal challenges we had for each other,” he said, “but the only way that gets told is if a banner gets put up in the Woody.”