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 it. Day remembers being at his grandfather’s birthday party and relatives bought a cake with green and yellow frosting – Oregon’s colors.

“We were celebrating the fact that we were going to go to Oregon,” he said.

But Day and his wife Nina’s son, RJ, was only 1 year old, and the thought of moving 3,000 miles from their families made them reconsider.

“I called Chip,” Day said. “I’d all but accepted the job, and then when I told him I wasn’t going to do it, I remember his answer. He said, ‘That’s why I love you. I understand why.’ ”

It was the right move for his family, but it was hard for Day to watch Kelly build Oregon into a power while he was at a middling BC program. The coach Kelly hired instead of him – Mark Helfrich – succeeded Kelly and led the Ducks to the 2014 College Football Playoff title game against Ohio State. Yes, Buckeye fans, Day could have been the opposing coach in that game, a thought Day has contemplated.

Day and Kelly finally joined forces when Kelly became coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and hired Day as his quarterbacks coach. They were together for three years there before Kelly was fired, and then for one 2-14 season in San Francisco before meeting the same fate.

That year with the 49ers was a tough one, beyond the losing. By then, the Days had three young children and their relatives were on the opposite coast. Nina said Kelly and his wife, Jill, were invaluable as a support system.

“Chip has always been so great with our kids,” Nina said. “RJ has always idolized Chip. Jill and I are very close friends. She helped me tremendously out in San Francisco.”

Jill invited the Days to swim in their backyard pool. She’d go to the Day house and make gingerbread houses with the kids.

“When they’re young and we’re very far from family, to have somebody else just have eyes on your kids, play with your kids, it’s just a big help,” Nina said.

A seamless transition at Ohio State

Day wasn’t unemployed long after the disastrous 49ers season. Ohio State coach Urban Meyer hired him and Kevin Wilson to revitalize the Buckeyes’ offense following OSU’s 31-0 loss in the 2016 CFP semifinals. Kelly became UCLA’s coach in 2018.

Day and Kelly remained close, though neither said he gave much thought to a potential reunion. Day hired Bill O’Brien as offensive coordinator in January, only to see him leave three weeks later to become head coach at Boston College.

While that was happening, Kelly and UCLA were in the process of an amicable divorce following his interviews for NFL offensive coordinator jobs. The timing for Day and Kelly to work together again was finally right.

“For so many reasons, it’s exciting because the trust is very, very important,” Day said. “Having an experienced coach who’s been a head coach at the NFL and college levels, that’s what I was looking for in that position. To solidify that was critical.”

Their roles have switched since the last time they coached together, but both Day and Kelly said the transition has been seamless. Kelly is happy to be able to concentrate on football and not worry about all the tangential issues a head coach must handle in this NIL/transfer portal era. He has no trouble being below Day in the pecking order.

“I don’t really care who gets the credit,” Kelly said. “I just want to help Ohio State win. He has the final decision. That comes with the territory, but we’ve never had an issue with it at all.

“I think we’re both guided by the same North Star, and that’s to create an environment where the players have the opportunity to be successful. Every single day, we dedicate ourselves to that.”

Day loves that Kelly has faced every kind of defense and has an answer for anything that’ll be thrown at him. Nina Day said that when the two of them get into the details of football strategy, it’s like listening to a foreign language.

“They both have very high football IQs,” she said. “When they talk football, I don’t think anybody else really understands what they’re talking about.”

Said Kelly: “I can see to an outsider that it may sound like you’re speaking in tongue, but we understand each other.”

Ryan Day, Chip Kelly have a common goal

Expectations at Ohio State are always high. But this season feels different after three straight losses to Michigan and seeing OSU’s archrival win the national title. Ohio State’s roster is loaded after retaining the nucleus of last year’s team and adding pivotal transfers.

The changes on the coaching staff, most notably the addition of Kelly, are also crucial. Day ran himself ragged the past few years. He had to immerse himself in the defense in 2021 before hiring Jim Knowles as defensive coordinator two years ago. He had to micromanage the offense last year following the departure of coordinator Wilson. For the first time as OSU coach, Day will relinquish play-calling duties.

“The experience that Jim Knowles and Chip Kelly have allows me to at least get a couple hours of sleep at night,” Day said.

No longer will he have to spend late Thursday nights plotting third-down plays because he didn’t believe anyone else could do it as well. The trust he has in Kelly is complete.

Decades ago, their bond was born when Kelly challenged Day to go to a program that could win a national championship. Now, a national championship is the only thing that could make this Buckeyes’ season an unqualified success.

Both Kelly and Day demurred when asked how special winning a title together would be. They spoke instead about doing it for the players who have endured the crushing losses to Michigan and, in many cases, put on hold their NFL dreams for one more season as Buckeyes.

But Nina Day knows how meaningful it would be.

“If Ryan does get it done and wins it all,” she said, “I don’t think there’s many other people in this world he’d want by his side other than Chip. It’d be special all around if it did happen for them. I know they’ll both swing as hard as they can to make it happen.”

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Finally reunited, Day and Kelly eager to create Ohio State magic