Ryan Day took the call from Chip Kelly that changed his life at a pay phone in his school cafeteria.
Almost 30 years ago, Day was a senior at Manchester Central High School in New Hampshire. He was a promising quarterback with grades that earned him Ivy League offers. Cornell, Brown and Dartmouth were his top choices.
Then Day got that call from Kelly, a University of New Hampshire assistant coach he’d known for years. Kelly understood how prestigious the Ivy League was. But he also knew he could tap into Day’s ultra-competitive nature.
“He kind of challenged me,” Day said. “He says, ‘The Ivy Leagues don’t play for a national title. Don’t you want to play more than just eight games a year?’
“I committed right there in the cafeteria, and the rest is history. He must have known: Come at me with a competitive challenge. He pressed the right button.”
Day and Kelly have been close ever since. Kelly was his offensive coordinator at New Hampshire and became a mentor. Kelly tried hiring Day when he became head coach at Oregon and did hire him as his quarterbacks coach for his NFL stints with Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Now they are reunited again. In February, Kelly stepped down as UCLA’s head coach to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. As training camp opens Thursday, their futures are linked as well as their pasts as Ohio State approaches a season with immense expectations and pressure.
Ryan Day and Chip Kelly have a Manchester bond
To understand the bond between Day and Kelly, it helps to know about their hometown.
With a population of 115,000, Manchester is the largest city in New Hampshire. Once a thriving textile mill town, the city’s economy declined in the latter part of the last century. In 1991, federal regulators shut down four major banks in the city.
“Nobody gives you anything in this town,” said Day’s father-in-law, Stan Spirou, who was the longtime basketball coach at New Hampshire College (now Southern New Hampshire University). “You have to earn it. Work ethic is key.”
Athletics were huge, especially for Day and Kelly.
“It’s your typical small city where everybody knows each other, and there was a great sports community,” Kelly said. “Whether it was CYO basketball or Little League baseball or Pop Warner (football), a lot of the coaches were the same. A lot of the people that were mentors to us when we were younger are the same guys.”
Kelly and Day attended Manchester Central High, 15 years apart. Day was a standout in football, basketball and baseball, which probably was his best sport. Kelly worked at Spirou’s basketball camp and coached a young Day in the summer.
Even at that early age, Day impressed Kelly with his competitiveness. That didn’t change when Day enrolled at UNH on a partial scholarship.
He and Kelly became kindred spirits. This was an era before tablets made studying video portable, and Day was a fixture at the football facility. He quipped that his grade point average was considerably higher in the spring than in the fall.
“He really just has a competitive streak in him that set him apart from the other guys,” Kelly said. “His preparation was an advantage for him. He worked extremely hard at the little things. You can preach that as a coach, but not everybody takes it to the level that Ryan took it to. He was just a lot of fun to coach. You never had to worry if he was going to be prepared for whoever we’re playing this week.”
That was a challenge. At UNH, Kelly completely changed his scheme based on that week’s opponent.
“You would run the Wing-T one week, and then we’d spread five wide (receivers) the next,” Day said. “One year, we threw it six times one week, and the next week we threw it 65 times. Every week was a different offense.”
In Day’s senior season, Kelly began using the ultra-fast tempo that would become his trademark at Oregon.
“We would run over 100 plays in a game,” Day said. “We felt we were going to be in better shape than the other team and physically wear them down, and that’s what we did.”
Both Day and Kelly are fiery, and they had their moments. Kelly recalled a game against Connecticut in which Day made a bad read and threw an interception. He read his quarterback the riot act.
“I told him if he did that again, I was never going to call another pass play, that we would just hand off the rest of the game,” Kelly said.
UNH quickly got the ball back after an interception. Kelly called a play-action pass and Day threw it for a touchdown. Day looked to the UNH sideline and stared down Kelly with an I-showed-you look.
“It just spoke to his competitive nature,” Kelly said. “You knew you could push those buttons with him, and he would always respond in a positive manner.”
Day set UNH records for completion percentage and touchdowns. Playing for Kelly reinforced his desire to become a coach. After one year coaching tight ends at UNH under Kelly, Day left to climb the coaching ladder at Boston College, Florida and Temple, with two stints at Temple and three at BC.
Ryan Day, Chip Kelly have a relationship beyond coaching
Day was at BC in 2007 when Kelly wanted to hire him after becoming Oregon’s coach. Day was on the verge of taking…
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