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The Good morning Bucknottors. Welcome to the Bucknuts Morning 5 here on Wednesday. May 13th, 2026. I am Dave Biddle. Very happy joined by Stephen Means from Cleveland.com.

Stephen, welcome into the show and thanks for your time, sir.

Yeah, thanks for having me, man. You know, big fan. And Kent State graduate, is that right? Do I have that right? Yeah. Mark Porter's going to love this. So Ken State, the Golden Flash has produced, Stephen Means and Mark Porter. I mean, that's good stuff right there. And I believe your first,

credit me if I'm wrong,

your first year on the beat was 2018.

Do I have that right? quarter. I mean, that's good. That's good stuff right there. And I believe your first,

correct me if I'm wrong, your first year on the beat was 2018. Do I have that right?

It was the middle of the season. In fact, my first game, literally like my second day at

Cleveland.com, I'm pretty sure was me driving down to Columbus for the game against Nebraska where they

wore the all black jerseys during the daytime. And I walked into a, oh, so this is how you cover

Ohio State. Everybody freaks out all the time. Exactly right. Yeah, I remember the Ryan Day

because that was Urban's last year, obviously, and then Ryan took over the next year.

What was your take on that press conference? I always thought that was kind of weird, because usually if it's an introductory press conference, it's the new head coach and the AD, maybe the school president. Usually the outgoing coach is not right there. I always thought that was kind of strange, and it kind of took the spotlight off Ryan Day. But also it was urban passing the torch. I get it. But I always thought that was kind of a strange introductory press conference. What was your take? It felt like we were having a retirement party and a hiring party on the same day. Yes. Yes. And it's like, oh, you could only do that in the healthiest of healthiest programs. And that's what apparently that was. You know, I remember I had the first question I asked Gene Smith. I said, you know, why didn't you interview anybody else like for the job or did you just know you had your man? He said, I knew I had my man. There was no reason to interview anybody else. And he was right. Ryan Day's turned up to be a good hire. All right. before we get to like brass tax, we're going to talk strengths and weaknesses of the team this year. I don't know if there are weaknesses. I'm curious to get your take on that. This time of year for what we do, it's, it's fun because we don't have as much going on, but it's also hard to find stuff to work on. Is that a good way to describe it?

Yeah, you find maybe bigger picture stuff that you don't actually publish until like July.

Maybe you're, you know, working stuff that's behind the scenes.

It's, as you can tell on the internet, this is the time when everybody goes, hey, what if we did this or what if this existed all the craziness of hypothetical college football maybe has this heyday maybe a little bit more

than when you have actual games to talk about i miss speaker somebody saying good hire i would

say ryan day was was a good hire maybe a great hire what's your take steve yeah i mean obviously

it's a bold move

in the moment to hire a guy who had no ties here had never been a head coach in any level before

of course yeah bold move but eight years later a lot of wins everything hasn't been perfect

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