The pressure to win ebbs and flows like the tide. At Ohio State, Ryan Day can rest easy after winning the national championship. Today, anyway.

Asked Monday night if the pressure would be different next season, Day said, “Yeah, try losing the first game and see how that goes at Ohio State.”

Ohio State’s 2025 season opener on Aug. 30 against Texas will be a can’t-miss affair for Buckeyes fans wanting to celebrate one more time. The Shoe will be jam-packed. But Longhorns fans will have sky-high hopes as well for the start of the Arch Manning era.

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The 2025 season will be the second straight year Texas has played a non-conference road game against the defending national champions. UT went to Michigan in September and crushed the Wolverines 31-12 in the Big House. Now, it’s on to Columbus.

Heaven help those looking for tickets with thin bank accounts.

Day should take plenty of time to celebrate first, though. He’s the one who’s been under enormous pressure from his own fan base. Sarkisian had it better from the start as he inherited a sputtering program that could be molded from the ground up. Not Day.

Day took over after Urban Meyer’s departure and was expected to keep the Buckeyes’ national championship train going. Multiple double-digit winning season wasn’t good enough for a fan base that endured frustrating Michigan losses and multiple close-but-not-good enough finishes.

“Well, I feel like from the start of this thing, we've been knocking on the door, and I think about the '19 team and the '20 team and the '21 team, the '22 team, you keep going through these seasons, and we weren't that far off,” Day said after beating Notre Dame to win the College Football Playoffs.

“But you’ve got to find a way to break through and make it to where we are right now. I think in today’s day and age, there’s just so much that goes with wins and losses and social media and people have to write articles and there's a lot of things that are said that, yeah, certainly have an effect on you and your family.

“But when you sign up for this job, that's what you sign up for,” Day added. “You've got to be strong enough to withstand those storms, to come out the back end.”

Sarkisian can understand. He understands and embraces Texas fans expectations and puts a lot of that pressure on himself, too. He wants to win just as bad.

Sarkisian’s teams have reached the College Football Playoffs semifinals in back-to-back years. In 2023, it came down to the final play against Washington. This season, it came down to a first-and-goal situation at the Ohio State 1-yard line. The Horns, like the Buckeyes, are knocking on the door. Sarkisian just has to figure how to break on through.

Short of winning a national title, there’s no way Arch Manning can match the Longhorns’ hype for 2025

On3 lists Texas as its No. 1 team in way-too-early 2025 preseason rankings because of Manning

“We’ve got a great deal of pride,” Sarkisian said after the Cotton Bowl loss to Ohio State. “We’ve got a great deal of pride in this helmet. We've got a great deal of pride in being Longhorns and playing the game of football the right way. I think we do that. I think we win with class, and I think we lost with class tonight. That's something that you learn in life.

“Life’s not always going to go your way,” Sarkisian added. “But if you can do it the right way and you show some resolve and some resiliency and you be a man about it and you be accountable for your actions, you can get on the other side of that adversity and keep going forward. And that's what these two guys will do, and that's what the other 120 guys in that locker room will do.”

Both Day and Sarkisian have a full offseason to figure out what comes next. They’ll both be losing an incredible amount of talent to the NFL Draft. How they go about replacing multiple starters will be key storylines throughout spring practice.

Ohio State and Texas will meet again come Aug. 30. The pressure to win will subside for a while. But not for long.