Swift action is necessary in Urban Meyer investigation

Ohio State University did the right thing by placing football head coach Urban Meyer on administrative leave on Wednesday. That action came within hours of reports that raised questions about when Meyer learned of allegations of abuse by one of his assistants.

And university trustees followed that quickly by a second good move on Thursday, which was to take responsibility for investigating the situation quickly.

It can’t happen quickly enough.

The reputations of individuals and the institution are at stake, and the longer this takes, the more it will fester.

Football practice starts today. And no one wants this dark cloud to linger — not Courtney Smith, the woman who raised the question; not OSU trustees; not Urban Meyer and his family; and not the football players and fans.

University officials already are under the gun with investigations into alleged transgressions by university employees, including a former athletic department doctor and a diving coach accused of sexually assaulting students in separate situations, and by those who ran an office created to help sexual assault victims. That office was receiving such complaints from students but not reporting them to the proper authorities for investigation, perhaps robbing victims of counseling services and justice.

The trustees lead an educational institution that teaches not only academics but also important life lessons — such as holding true to core values.

One value that Ohio State University and Meyer personally have professed is respect for others — for their ideas, their races, their genders, their cultures and their personal safety. Meyer specifically has repeatedly told the young men on his teams that abuse of women will not be tolerated.

The news on Wednesday was that Courtney Smith, ex-wife of former assistant coach Zach Smith, told reporters that she informed Meyer’s wife, Shelley, in 2015 that Zach Smith was abusive and that she encouraged Shelley Meyer to tell her husband about it.

Urban Meyer was asked during an unrelated news conference on July 24 when he learned about allegations of abuse made to Powell police against Zach Smith, the grandson of former OSU coach Earle Bruce, in October 2015.

Meyer said he did not know about the October 2015 incident until July 23 of this year, the day Meyer fired Zach Smith.

Meyer acknowledged being aware of a 2009 incident in Florida in which Zach Smith was charged with aggravated domestic battery. Meyer, who also was in Florida at the time, said that he and his wife worked with the Smiths and encouraged counseling.

The number of police calls to the Smith residence in recent years would suggest that counseling wasn’t enough, and now what had been a domestic dispute has risen to the level of crisis for Ohio State University.

The trustees are right not to rush to judgment without more facts, but they must move quickly to investigate and take action. As with the trustees, we reserve judgment on what that action should be.

But there are only a handful of likely scenarios, and one of them is that if Urban Meyer knew about abusive behavior by one of his assistants and did not address it, the university will be obligated to hold Meyer to the same standard to which he has held his players and show him the door.