Ohio State coach blames deleted texts on an ‘IT person’

Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer is disputing a key finding in his university’s investigation of him by saying he didn’t discuss how to delete text messages on his phone with a staff member in early August.

He said the text messages on his phone were not deleted by him but instead were deleted by an unnamed information technology staff member several months ago.

In an interview with ESPN, he also said he doesn’t recall having a conversation with football staff member Brian Voltolini about changing the settings on his phone on Aug. 1. Later on Monday, he did recall a conversation about his phone with Voltolini but said he told Voltolini there was “nothing to hide” on it. His version of events contrast with Ohio State’s investigative findings, which said Meyer “specifically discussed” with Voltolini on Aug. 1 “how to adjust the settings on Meyer’s phone so that text messages older than one year would be deleted.”

The contents of his phone became potential evidence that day after a media report came out alleging that Meyer had made inaccurate denials about his knowledge of domestic violence allegations against one of his assistant coaches from 2015. The university then investigated how Meyer managed that coach, Zach Smith, and subsequently punished Meyer with a three-game suspension.

“My phone started to lock up throughout the spring,” Meyer said Monday. “The IT person would take my phone, and whatever he did, he did, to increase the storage capacity. And I found out several months ago, I think late spring is when I was told, is that he changed my setting to one year. So once again, I never changed the setting on my phone. I never changed a text message on my phone, and when I heard that, I just… with all due respect to the (Ohio State investigative) report, I would never do that, I did not do that, I don’t even know how to change a setting on my phone.”

Ohio State’s report found that he discussed changing settings on his phone on Aug. 1 but could not determine whether he actually did change the settings then or at an earlier time.

That was the same day that Brett McMurphy published an article that included text messages from 2015 written by Meyer’s wife, Shelley, in which she discussed Smith’s alleged abuse with the woman who was accusing him of it: Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney.