Results of Urban Meyer Investigation

As if we weren’t busy enough second-guessing coaching decisions, now we must become experts in ethics and best practices as we reflect on Ohio State University’s three-game suspension of football coach Urban Meyer.

Meyer’s handling (or mishandling) of allegations of domestic abuse from the ex-wife of the former assistant coach, Zach Smith (the first dating to 2009) got him into this mess, and then he fudged the truth more than a little in a public statement at the Big Ten’s media days. Hence the bigger mess.

The university investigated for two weeks and then slapped Meyer with the three-game suspension Wednesday night and also banished athletic director Gene Smith for a bit less than three weeks. Smith said he failed to alert others to red flags about former receivers coach Zach Smith’s issues at home that were being investigated by police. The latter incident was in 2015. Smith wasn’t fired until July of this year.

So OSU doesn’t take domestic abuse seriously enough or it doesn’t take its own standards and regulations seriously enough or it takes football too seriously to care enough about the first two.

“I followed my heart and not my head,” Meyer said Wednesday night about Smith, to whom he had emotional ties. Smith is the grandson of former Buckeyes coach Earle Bruce, a mentor to Meyer.

If he had truly followed his head, he’d have sat Smith down some years ago and said, “You straighten out or you’re gone.” Because there’s no doubt he’d tell a player (not a star player, but some backup in trouble) exactly that. And, if he had followed his heart, he’d have done the same, because Smith’s wife (later to be his ex-wife) was in physical danger and claims to have informed Meyer’s wife. No pillow talk?

Meyer’s record is 73-8 at OSU and he has won a national title there, to go with the two collected at Florida. He wins. And so he got 73-8 justice. He will miss three games.

When he returns, he will be hailed as a hero. Because we take football soooo seriously.

Perhaps we can still learn from Dr. George L. Cross, who was president of the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s.

After he detailed for the state legislature the school’s budget priorities in a lengthy meeting, one member said: “That’s all well and good. But what kind of football team are we going to have this year.”
And Cross replied: “We want to build a university our football team can be proud of.”

He later said he thought his remark was “cynical.” Ah, some things age beautifully.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman