The landscape of college football has changed significantly in recent years. With the rise of NIL and the mostly unrestricted transfer portal, the sport is experiencing a new era of player movement and financial pay.
However, as the dust refuses to settle, some of the sport's top leaders are calling for major structural overhauls to save the game from its chaotic rulebook. Among them is Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, who recently floated a radical solution to the sport's growing pains: an NFL-style draft for college football.
Speaking with ESPN's Kevin Clark on the "This Is Football" podcast, Day voiced his frustration with the current state of roster management. The quick rollout of NIL lacked the necessary guardrails or oversight, leaving coaches, administrators, and collectives to navigate a largely unregulated open market. For Day, the sport is caught between two entirely incompatible worlds.
Ohio State's 2026 college football is still months away, but preparation has already begun. Spring practice is underway, and plenty of news will come about next year's Buckeyes. Ohio State basketball made it back to the NCAA Tournament, but lost in the first round, setting up an important offseason. It's the busiest time of year for Ohio State. Stay on top of the latest Buckeye news by BECOMING A BUCKNUTS SUBSCRIBER today!
"Once we started going down this road of NIL, we have to kind of go one of two ways, in my opinion," Day told Clark. "We almost have to go back to where we were before or we need to go all the way towards the NFL. I think right now we're sort of in purgatory."
This "purgatory" is characterized by the ongoing mix of traditional college recruiting and annual free agency (the transfer portal), without the legally binding contracts, salary caps, and tampering rules that keep professional leagues like the NFL balanced.
When asked what he would change about the sport if he could just wave a magic wand, Day didn't hesitate to point toward a professionalized structure centered around a main governing body and a formalized draft system.
"The first thing is... creating a structure that you can enforce rules," Day explained. "It's not too far-fetched for me to think that there's a way that you could actually have a draft and build it like the NFL. I know that seems a little bit out there, but we're going to need a lot of help to get there."
While Day acknowledged that implementing such a system is not going to happen overnight, he sees it as a potential step if the sport wants to keep its professional path. The alternative — returning to strict amateurism — seems more unlikely given the legal, judicial and legislative momentum of the past decade. Therefore, an NFL-style model, including a draft to distribute talent and ensure competitive parity, might be the only logical outcome.
But how would a draft really work for high school athletes selecting a college?
Day acknowledged that the idea is unorthodox for American collegiate sports but pointed to other athletic pipelines as a potential blueprint.
"Somebody was explaining to me the other day, they do it up in Canada for the juniors," Day noted, referencing the draft systems often used in the Canadian Hockey League. "If you want to become part of it, then you put your name in."
The CHL consists of three leagues: the Ontario Hockey League, the Quebec-Maritimes Junior Hockey League and the Western Hockey League. Each of these leagues has its own draft, selecting players as young as 16 years old.
In this opt-in model, elite high school athletes could theoretically declare for a college football draft, giving up their ability to choose any specific school in exchange for guaranteed, structured NIL compensation and development. For Day, the details of how the draft works matter less than the ultimate goal: creating a system that can be enforced to bring order to roster building.
Follow Patrick Murphy on Twitter and Instagram for more Ohio State coverage
What's next for the Buckeyes? Make sure you're in the loop -- take five seconds to sign up for our FREE Buckeyes newsletter now!
"I'm having a hard time figuring out how we work through this right now with this NIL because recruiting is always going to be part of the college process until we change it," he said. "And because that's not going to ever change, we have to create some sort of enforcement arm. Otherwise, we're always going to be in this space when we're putting together rosters."
As college football evolves into a more semi-professional sport, voices like Day's will become increasingly important. The current model is seen by many coaches as unsustainable. Whether the final answer is a draft, as Day proposed, formal employment contracts, revenue sharing or a new enforcement body, Day's comments highlight a common view among college football's top figures: the sport cannot remain in this "purgatory" forever.