Zach Smith on firing: Ohio State ‘spineless’
Zach Smith says he has accepted there is not much he can say that will resurrect his coaching career, but he cannot accept why he was fired as an assistant coach at Ohio State.
Head coach Urban Meyer said when his three-game suspension was announced last week that he was guilty of protecting Smith amid a series of domestic abuse allegations over several years. Smith maintains the abuse allegations are false so Meyer had no reason to protect him.
“He never protected me,” Smith said in a telephone interview with USA TODAY. “Urban knew the truth. That’s what’s lost in all this: the truth. Everything he’s said negatively about me, that’s all on Ohio State. That’s all from the pressure they put on him to keep
his job because they are spineless. That’s why they fired Jim Tressel. They are absolutely spineless, and that probably come from the board, the president — all of them.”
Ohio State spokesperson Chris Davey said Thursday in an email that the university was “looking into” Smith’s statement to USA TODAY.
Meyer’s suspension came after an investigation by Ohio State that produced a 23-page report and resulted in the suspensions of Meyer and athletics director Gene Smith for their handling of the allegations made against Zach Smith.
Shortly before talking to USA TODAY, new details from a 2015 alleged incident involving Smith and his then-wife, Courtney, were published by The Columbus Dispatch. The report was based off one page of a narrative from Powell (Ohio) police that was mailed anonymously to the Dispatch. According to the document, Courtney Smith called police to her home in October 2015 and told them about a history of violent acts, including choking and death threats, made by Smith.
The document is one page among many that Powell city officials have declined to release to the news media.
Courtney Smith’s allegations were investigated by police and forwarded to prosecutors, who did not charge Smith.
Delaware County Prosecutor Carol O’Brien said her office typically handles only felonies, and under Ohio law a firsttime domestic assault that does not result in serious injuries would be charged as a misdemeanor. A misdemeanor charge could have been pursued by the Powell city attorney’s office, but it also did not seek to prosecute Zach Smith.
“Looking back at this report, this was not felony domestic assault,” O’Brien told USA TODAY on Wednesday.
Megan Canavan, a spokesperson for the city of Powell, said the alleged incident was “investigated thoroughly” and police “did work with prosecutors to review” the allegations made by Courtney Smith.
“In order to be charged, you have to commit a crime, and that’s the problem here,” Zach Smith said. “People on social media want to convict people for things that people really investigated and looked into. ... What matters is that people who are paid to investigate investigated and nothing came of it. People who are not paid to investigate want to convict me, but the problem is people were paid to investigate didn’t charge me. Here we are. We are dealing with social media idiots who want to convict someone on what?
“There’s nothing.”
Julia L. Leveridge, the attorney for Courtney Smith, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Courtney Smith’s first publicly known accusation of domestic abuse by Zach Smith came in 2009 while she was pregnant with the couple’s first child and her husband was a graduate assistant under Meyer at Florida. Smith was arrested on two felony charges, but the case was not prosecuted.
Courtney Smith said in an interview with Stadium, a multiplatform sports network, that the alleged abuse continued when her husband was the wide receivers coach at Ohio State and that Meyer’s wife, Shelley, and Lindsey Voltolini, the wife of Ohio State’s director of football operations, had knowledge of Smith’s alleged abusive behavior.
Zach Smith was fired from Ohio State on July 23 after a trespassing summons issued to him was made public subsequent to Courtney Smith being granted a protective order. Courtney Smith detailed to college football reporter Brett McMurphy other allegations against Smith, including text messages and photos of injuries for which she says Smith was responsible.
Smith offered an explanation to USA TODAY for one of the photos that showed Courtney Smith’s hand bleeding,
“That picture is real,” Smith said. “That picture of blood coming out of her hand is real. The story is, was that I was asleep and she was irate for God knows what, I don’t even remember, and she was screaming and yelling while my son was in bed with me. He woke up crying and then I woke up. Then she tried to pour a can of tobacco on me. When she did, I reached out and grabbed the can of tobacco and shut it on her hand. The metal top cut her hand. It was completely unintentional.”
Zach Smith also disputed much that was contained in Ohio State’s investigative report, including that he had a sexual relationship with a secretary on the football staff.
“I have never had sexual relations with anyone I worked with,” Smith said. “That’s my No. 1 rule in life. Not one human. Nobody.”
The OSU report also cited salacious accusations that were originally reported by Stadium, including that Smith had sent sexually explicit photos of himself from the White House during the football team’s 2015 visit, and that he had sex toys mailed to the football office.
Smith denied sending the photos, and of the sex toys said, “I ordered it as a gag gift for a bachelor party for my best friend who was getting married.”
Smith said he met with OSU investigators for more than two hours and now questions their motives.
“The real question is what were they investigating?” Smith said. “I still don’t know the answer. From the questions they asked me, they were investigating me and my life. They were not investigating Ohio State, Urban Meyer or Gene Smith and if they handled it properly. They were investigating me. It felt like when I met with Powell police in 2015.”
He didn’t dispute compiling a $600 bill at a strip club while on a recruiting trip or that his marriage was volatile.
“Everyone has regrets,” Smith said. “I don’t regret the coach I’ve been for the last two years nor does anyone else. Nor does Urban, Gene Smith. I had a meeting with Urban in June where (Meyer) said I was one of his best coaches. We were talking about the next step toward becoming a head coach because things were going so well for me and my value on the staff. And here we are.”