COLUMBUS—As the clock struck 00:00 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Monday night, Ohio State receiver Emeka Egbuka hit his knees.

As the newly-minted all-time leading receiver in Buckeyes history watched confetti fall from the ceiling, tears fell from his eyes.

Exhaustion, exhilaration and exhalation had run into each other in a moment of perfection that overwhelmed the usually cool Washington native.

As usual, it didn't take long for one of his teammates to be there to pick him up. Treveyon Henderson, once a shy, reclusive kid from Virginia, knelt beside his classmate and friend and consoled him, offered up a prayer and thanks and helped Egbuka to his feet.

The two seniors, instrumental pieces in Ohio State's program for the last four years — who had fallen short of every program goal they've had in their time in Columbus — grabbed their 2025 National Championship hats and shirts and disappeared into the growing mob in the middle of the field and begun celebrating in earnest the biggest win of their football lives.

Across the field, freshman defensive lineman Eddrick Houston was face-to-face with legendary defensive line coach Larry Johnson with his own tears welling up in his eyes. A five-star recruit playing in his home city of Atlanta, Houston has seen his role growing for the Buckeyes over the last two months. His emotions, raw and unexpected, weren't about him.

"It's just everything," Houston said postgame. "Especially with the seniors leaving, and they basically haven't done like won anything like that. But to give them this while they're leaving, it just meant just something more for me. For them to be able to help me throughout a bunch of stuff that I've been through since I've been here for this year, it was just great that I was able to contribute to help them get this national championship."

Ohio State has long adhered to the principle of The Brotherhood. It's as clichéd as just about anything in big-time sports, but that doesn't mean it’s manufactured when it's true. Brotherhood is a talking point that emerged as a focal point during Urban Meyer's era of Buckeyes football, but its been joined by a pair of Ryan Day mantras over the last few years: Fight and Tough Love.

At times, those things are hard to quantify, nothing but talking points as empty as Ohio Stadium in mid-January.

But sometimes? Sometimes they're as bright and glaringly obvious as the shine of the national championship trophy Ryan Day and his team hoisted together on Monday night.

This year's team is the embodiment of all those things. It's the brotherhood that brought back a core group of veterans desperate for some validation, some accomplishment to cling to when they're long gone from Columbus. It was the fight from a team that had its back against the wall after a devastating, embarrassing and potentially derailing loss to arch-rival Michigan at the end of the November. It was tough love on display when Day and his team met the next day and locked themselves into the team meeting room for hours, unwilling to come out until grievances were aired, wrongs were righted and a new, emboldened spirit of unity and purpose rang throughout campus like the Victory Bell on an Autumn Saturday afternoon.

Ohio State was not perfect on Monday night and it wasn't perfect for most of the season but the Buckeyes resilience kept heads held high and arms locked together. Sports aren't real life but the lessons from sports are, and have always been, applicable to real life. The challenges, when vanquished, make the wins even sweeter. That's fight. That's what Day and his coaching staff had to impress on the veteran-laden Buckeyes throughout this title run, one that felt—somehow—inevitable and improbable all at once.

"I'm just as proud of this team no matter what happened," Day said during Tuesday morning's championship press conference. "But now the best thing is, again, you get to hear about these guys for the history of college football, and these guys get to go back to the Woody and put their arm around their wife and their kids and say, 'Look what dad did.'

To me, that's all that matters ... It isn't to hoist trophies or make big contracts or anything like that. The reason you get into coaching is to help young men reach their dreams and goals, period. At least that's what I and our staff are in this thing for."

Dreams and goals nearly always come at a cost. Day's six-year run, his first six years as a head coach, have been historic statistically but have included a series of close misses and disappointments, highlighted by the Buckeyes 13-10 loss in November against Michigan. His legacy has been a complicated one, defined by the losses while the majority of his wins have been dismissed as simply living up to expectations. He's won more games at this point of his career than any coach since Knute Rockne nearly 100 years ago but football is unforgiving, especially at a place like Ohio State. He knew the expectations when he took the job and, at every turn that doesn't involve the 160-mile stretch between Columbus and Ann Arbor, he's maintained or elevated the Buckeyes program.

Day has been mocked, ridiculed for irrational reasons and criticized for rational ones but he's never lost his focus. His family has been threatened, his children forced to face public backlash for losses to that team up north. Day never stopped believing in himself or the mission he accepted from Urban Meyer six seasons ago. He now stands next to Meyer, Jim Tressel, Woody Hayes and Paul Brown as the only coaches to lead college football's bluest blue blood to a national championship.

"I just know that Ohio State is a special place," Day said. "It's an honor to be here, an honor to be around some of those names that you just said, because when you hear some of those names like that, they're some of the best coaches in the history of the game.

"When you say happy for your family, this [team] is the family right here. This is it. But also for my wife and kids, I think for all of these guys now, they can have some peace, and to me that's important."

There won't be much time for celebrating or for settling in that new found peace. Even 36 hours after Day became just the third active college football coach to own a national championship, he's already being tasked with trying to defend it, to protect his current roster and to try and build his next one.

The next fight is coming. The next chance to prove the strength of the brotherhood is already underway.

And the next Ohio State team will have a prime example of what tough love, commitment and faith can do when backs are against the wall.

"A lot of things get said and a lot of things get written, but that never affected us," Day said. "These guys never flinched. They never frayed at all. They stuck together. It actually brought them together more. Yeah, this is a special group of guys, just the loyalty. That's it. That's it.

"I always wanted to be the hardest working guy in the building as the head coach and lead that way and care and love these guys the best I possibly could and focus on the process, not the results. Weather some storms along the way and go from there. But that's it.

"There's nobody in the Woody that really ever doubted each other, and we just kept pushing. Now you're seeing the results of that."

Enjoy this moment, Ohio State fans. There are 134 teams around the country hanging signs with quotes and mottos and mantras all over their facilities, wishing for a buy-in that turns clichés to championships.

The Buckeyes are hanging a banner because this team believed.

In their head coach, in each other and in the power of fighting for the people who pick them up when the rest of the world is trying to tear them down.