Fans’ loyalty bestowed upon Meyer or his peers is misguided if it’s blind
We don’t know yet whether Urban Meyer let Ohio State down.
But we do know what he is counting on now.
We know the supporters Meyer is counting on, because we can find them in and around every major athletic program in the country. He is counting on the kind of people who prefer willful ignorance to the truth, and who trick themselves into thinking that questioning power is a sign of weakness instead of a sign of strength, and who conflate
loyalty to a school with loyalty to a man.
He is counting on the worst kind of fandom and the worst kind of trust. It is the worst kind,
because it is blind, it is unconditional and it undermines the good of the whole.
And Meyer, just like so many other modern-day demigods, knows there are plenty of people willing to give it to him.
To be clear, Meyer has not been determined to have acted inappropriately in his handling of a situation involving an assistant coach accused of domestic abuse, but he is on paid administrative leave while Ohio State investigates. And to be fair, the
modest group of 200 people who rallied outside the Buckeyes’ home stadium to support Meyer last week does not represent an entire fan base.
But if any of this feels familiarly off-putting, it’s because we have been through this so many times before. Squint at those pictures of the signs in Columbus, Ohio, blaming the media and making an impassioned defense of a coach’s honor, and you might confuse them for similar scenes at Baylor, or at Penn State, or at any of the other locales where scandals were downplayed in the name of winning.
To this day, every online mention of either Art Briles or Joe Paterno invites a cavalcade of complaints from those who refuse to believe that men bestowed with more money and more power than university
chancellors should be held responsible for what happens under their watch.
And just like clockwork, the same reaction has begun in regard to Meyer and to Maryland’s D.J. Durkin, who was placed on leave while the university investigates an ESPN report of a “toxic culture” in the aftermath of the death of an offensive lineman after a May workout.
A disturbing pattern
For far too many fans, it’s not that they are afraid of the answers these investigations might find. More than that, they resent the mere fact anyone dares to ask the questions.
This, of course, is the natural culmination of a college sports environment in which coaches make millions of dollars per year while not only building bigger and bigger walls around their programs, but also convincing their fan bases that those walls
are absolutely necessary.
As a recent column in USA Today noted, the disturbing pattern of reported verbal abuse at Maryland was possible in part due to the fact programs have restricted almost all public and media access to workouts and practices. For the most part, fans have no problem with this because they think secrecy is vital to winning, even though one of the most successful dynasties of this century — USC under Pete Carroll — was one of the most open and accessible.
Complicating matters is the ludicrous line of thinking that high-profile head coaches can absolve themselves of responsibility by reporting delicate matters up the chain of command,
when for all intents and purposes there is no higher command than their office. Meyer is more powerful than his athletic director. Briles and Paterno were more powerful than theirs. They cannot claim to be subordinates only when it suits them.
Skewed priorities
But Meyer’s claim that he informed his bosses of the situation involving his assistant coach, Zach Smith, might be what allows him to return, mainly because he has plenty of supporters willing to accept that explanation and not ask for more details. They will accept that explanation out of what they consider a love for their school, even if that love seems awfully misguided.
Shouldn’t anyone who truly loves Ohio State want to know if an accused domestic abuser was allowed to retain a position of authority over student-athletes
for years, and want to know why those in charge let that happen?
Shouldn’t anyone who loves Maryland want to know if staffers really did push players so hard it put a life in danger and made things miserable for countless others?
Shouldn’t anyone who loves any of the schools who now employ coaches who worked at Baylor during its sexual assault scandal — Houston, Florida Atlantic, Texas and others — want to know for sure just what those assistants knew, and when, and why they never spoke up?
It sure seems like real loyalty to any of those schools should mean wanting to know the truth, in order to make those schools better. But these days, many see loyalty differently.
And that is exactly what Meyer is counting on.