Ohio State AD Gene Smith confident in Ryan Day despite back-to-back losses to Michigan

Ryan Day is a good football coach. That much can't be debated. He's 45-6 in five seasons as Ohio State's leader and he's gotten his team to the College Football Playoff twice in that span.

That's an unimpeachable record at most college football programs, but at Ohio State, the standards are higher than most college football programs. That includes championship wins, but just as important in Columbus is beating arch-rival Michigan, and that's something Day hasn't done for two seasons in a row now.

Despite that fact -- and again, it is a big fact at OSU -- athletic director Gene Smith recently expressed his vote of confidence in Day to ESPN. In fact, he went as far as to say that Day was the CEO of the program and that the two have had bountiful discussions on how to live up to the high expectations at Ohio State.

"My standards are high; our team standards are high. So we talk about how do we get better and how do we make sure we are able to win the championships that we aspire to win?" Smith told ESPN. "We look at each individual contest that got in the way of that, and we're trying to figure out what's the strategy to mitigate that. When we lose, it's highly disappointing, but I break things down and look at things objectively, and we have good conversations about what we need to do better."

The Michigan issue does need to be corrected. The Buckeyes haven't lost three straight games to the Wolverines since 1997, so another loss is something that OSU can't tolerate. 

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh does certainly seem to have Day's number right now, though, especially as it relates to the rest of the Big Ten. Outside of Michigan, Day has never lost to another Big Ten program. 

"The rivalry game's obviously very, very important," Day said in the same article. "When you look at those games, and you see these single plays that really cost us the game. When you're talking about on defense, giving up explosive plays, certainly that's very, very important. That's how games can go sideways. And so we have to identify that, get that fixed, and that hurt us in the Georgia game as well. That was something we talked about a lot in the offseason, or we're continually talking about now in the spring, but I really like the team that we have coming back."

OSU finished last season with two-straight losses, though one of them was in the CFP semifinal in a classic against eventual the national champion Georgia.