Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

First off- I don’t think Day was ever on the verge of being canned.  Or even close.  His winning % is among the best of all time, and the coaches, players, families love the guy.

As far as “ the program makes the coach”—I see it the opposite in this new age. 

Not only do you have to know your Xs and Os and know how to recruit, develop and motivate players ( as a good coach always has had to do), you now have to be good at so many other things.
You basically have to be a CEO at these helmet schools.  You have to manage what is basically free agency with the transfer portal having multiple open windows,NIL With virtually no restrictions, Meetings with the media and managing media expectations, managing the collectives and other sources for NL money, And recruiting becomes a completely different and more complex game.
As we have seen, there are many coaches out there. They just can’t handle all of that. 

Don't take this as a criticism of Day. But I think the answer to the question is unknowable right now. 

A guy like Urbz won everywhere. BGSU. Utah. Florida (NC). OSU (NC). You can't do that if you're not good. 

A guy like Saban won in multiple locations, but his final stop was a goddamned DYNASTY of college football. You just can't do that long term if you're not good. 

Somebody like a Tom Izzo can't be evaluated upon multiple coaching stops, but a multi-decade career of absolutely killing it speaks to him being one of the greats. 

Right now, we just don't know. Day has never had a HC stop before OSU, so we can't evaluate him based on his resume as a head coach elsewhere. And he's only been HC of Ohio State, a historically-strong program, 6 years. Admittedly he's proven that he's not a bad or mediocre coach, because even at OSU, the cracks would have started to show in years 3-4 when Urbz recruits started falling off, and the program "culture" became his as the effect of Urbz on program culture wore off. He's so far shown an ability to keep everything humming, so that's a feather in his cap. 

I think the truth will show up over the next 4 years. So far everything looks rosy. He keeps that up? He's a great coach. If it starts to slip? He's merely adequate-to-good. But in the absence of seeing him do anything with any other program, the sample size is still too small after 6 years to know. 

The other factor in all this is of course the rest of the staff.  I think at times a UGA OC or DC has "saved" the head coach's job (back in the day), and vice versa.  And if you have a good assistant, of course he gets noticed and probably leaves.  Can you then hire a competent replacement?  Or even if competent, is he as good as the old guy?  Maybe not.  Part of all of this is keeping your staff together, and replacing those who leave, and seeing it as a good thing that they leave for a better higher level job.

Then you have the expectations thing.  A really good coach at say Georgia Tech might be 9-4 in a season, and that may be a sign he is really good.  It's above expectations.  But maybe the schedule was soft and the 9 wins were over poor teams.  But it's 9 wins, does it repeat?  

At UGA, a few 9-4s would be Hot Seated.  

Maybe the best coach right now is some guy at Marshall or Austin Peay or NDSU, and is about to explode onto the scene at Texas A&M.

Exactly. And this is why I pushed back on the Ryan Walters "worst hire of the last decade" stuff.

Was he good? No. Sorry, 1-11 (0-9) isn't good even if you're coaching Our Little Sisters of the Poor. He was canned, and deservedly so.

But at Purdue? That's just garden-variety suck, not "worst hire in the conference" suck.

Wisconsin has a ceiling. And it's not NC or even B1G champs, in the new order. So any coach's results need to be evaluated relative to the ceiling.

You got this right in all ways.

And to circle back, Luke Fickell could be in line for worst hire. And it looked to be a home run! Then he misses a bowl game for the first time since 2001!

Napier was almost fired and now looks pretty good. 

Don't take this as a criticism of Day. But I think the answer to the question is unknowable right now.

A guy like Urbz won everywhere. BGSU. Utah. Florida (NC). OSU (NC). You can't do that if you're not good.

A guy like Saban won in multiple locations, but his final stop was a goddamned DYNASTY of college football. You just can't do that long term if you're not good.

Somebody like a Tom Izzo can't be evaluated upon multiple coaching stops, but a multi-decade career of absolutely killing it speaks to him being one of the greats.

Right now, we just don't know. Day has never had a HC stop before OSU, so we can't evaluate him based on his resume as a head coach elsewhere. And he's only been HC of Ohio State, a historically-strong program, 6 years. Admittedly he's proven that he's not a bad or mediocre coach, because even at OSU, the cracks would have started to show in years 3-4 when Urbz recruits started falling off, and the program "culture" became his as the effect of Urbz on program culture wore off. He's so far shown an ability to keep everything humming, so that's a feather in his cap.

I think the truth will show up over the next 4 years. So far everything looks rosy. He keeps that up? He's a great coach. If it starts to slip? He's merely adequate-to-good. But in the absence of seeing him do anything with any other program, the sample size is still too small after 6 years to know.

Don’t disagree.  I never said he was “ great.”
I don’t see anyone on the list I think would have done better.  He is still growing into the HC role- good coaches are always learning and growing. 
The irony is people forget the reason he was brought to Ohio State. Herb’s offense was stale and his passing game was nonexistent. After he lost 31 to nothing to Clemson in the playoff, he called it a clown show. That’s when he brought in Ryan day and immediately their offense became more dynamic and started scoring points and bunches.  I find it weird that people forget that 

Napier was almost fired and now looks pretty good.

And we have the same exact insane schedule, only with high expectations instead of low ones.  Ruh roh Raggy...

An unanswerable question, especially today, is how any of these highly regarded coaches would do with four years at say Duke.  That would be a good test.

By the same token, you could put me as HC at the usual elite programs and we'd do pretty well I suspect.  Recruiting would drop pretty quickly.