Meyer needs another mulligan for the truth
Have you wondered these past 36 hours or so how Ohio State University football coach Urban Meyer could not apologize directly to Courtney Smith and still keep his job? #MeToo.
Smith, of course, is the ex-wife of ex-OSU assistant Zach Smith, who almost cost Meyer his $7.6 million annual salary because the Buckeyes boss long refused to fire him despite numerous charges that he was abusing her while they were married. If nothing else shocked — and much did — about Meyer’s 3-D performance (defiant, disrespecting, disturbing) at the close of The Ohio State University’s Wednesday night news conference confirming the coach’s three-game suspension without pay, it was his refusal to acknowledge Ms. Smith by name when asked about her.
Such petulance and pandering should have been completely unacceptable to those folks above him in rank, though no employee in the Buckeye State is above Meyer in salary.
And that’s part of the problem. Not just at The Ohio State University, but everywhere that places its state university football or basketball coach in a position of perceived power and importance that dwarfs everyone else within their jock-addicted fiefdoms.
This had a chance to be
different, however. This had a chance for The Ohio State University to make a profound statement about the absolute necessity for priorities and personal accountability within a civilized society that Baylor University, Louisville, North Carolina and Penn State have all failed to grasp in recent years.
Nor did it necessarily have to fire Meyer. It could have suspended him for the season without pay, the school donating his salary to various shelters for battered women throughout the state. It could have ordered him to make public service announcements regarding sexual assault and marital violence. It could even have forced him to speak to some of those clinics and organizations, or at least order his team to visit such places to see the physical, mental and emotional toll such behavior exacts on the abused.
And if he balked at such sanctions, then The Ohio State University could have fired him. His choice. Instead, the reason the closed-door meeting went 12 hours instead of 12 minutes is because Meyer balked at even serving a three-game suspension without pay. Unbelievable.
So not only did the school pretty much do the least it could to punish Meyer for not firing Zach Smith until late July and for lying at Big Ten Media Days about his knowledge of the former assistant’s repugnant behavior, it allowed him at the news conference to show that he just might be the most narcissistic, unrepentant jerk in a profession overrun with them.
If nothing else, Meyer — having taken a mulligan on the truth over his media days lie — needs to be ordered to take a second mulligan regarding his non-apology to Courtney Smith.
Don’t misunderstand. This is an uncomfortable case. Even Courtney Smith’s own mother has questioned at least a few of her charges, which might explain why mother and daughter reportedly are estranged.
Said The Ohio State University president Michael Drake of the whole situation: ‘This is one of those circumstances where there is no right answer.’”
Yet there were plenty of wrong turns by Meyer, Zach Smith and The Ohio State University athletic director Gene Smith.
For starters, Zach Smith is a bum. At the very least he mistreated his wife, the mother of his children. He cheated on her. He allegedly hit her. If he didn’t out and out lie to Meyer about all of this and more, he kept things from his boss that could have cost him his job.
As for Meyer, his contempt for Courtney Smith is at the very least misplaced. He had, as the investigation concluded, “a blind spot” concerning Zach Smith, whom he apparently saw as something akin to a wayward son, at least partly because Smith is the grandson of former Ohio State coach Earle Bruce, whom Meyer has long seen as his mentor.
The only truly honest words out of Meyer’s mouth Wednesday may have been the following: “I followed my heart and not my head. I gave Zach Smith the benefit of the doubt.”
Finally, there’s Gene Smith, who did what too many ADs probably believe they are forced to do to keep their jobs. He enabled Meyer to continue to enable Zach Smith.
Doubts will long remain concerning so much of this, beginning with all those text messages it is believed Meyer deleted on or about Aug. 1, when he was first suspended.
There should be serious doubt that Shelley Meyer failed to share Courtney Smith’s 2015 texts to her that Zach was abusing her, especially since Mrs. Meyer once said of Zach Smith: “He scares me.”
There should also be plenty of doubt regarding whether Meyer’s “TREAT WOMEN WITH RESPECT” sign on the Buckeyes’ locker-room wall really means anything. And that’s not only regarding his treatment of Courtney Smith. Have everyone forgotten the NFL’s six-game suspension of former Buckeye Zeke Elliott for assaulting his girlfriend?
Of course, by delivering even a fake apology to Courtney Smith on Wednesday night, much of this might have faded away. Instead, thanks to Meyer, The Ohio State University is now all but certain to replace Alabama as the most hated football program in the country. And this time it won’t have anything to do with winning.
To return to Wednesday night, when asked what he’d like to say to Courtney Smith, Meyer replied, “Well, I have a message for everyone involved in this: I’m sorry that we’re in this situation.” #MeToo.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.