So you want a safe place?

You don’t want politics between the lines? You don’t need to know about the opinions or private lives of athletes? You just want a compartment you can open up when you’ve got a little time, something in which you might lose yourself for a little while? I sometimes feel that way too.

I started out as a sportswriter and think I could still do that. Better yet, somebody put up a little cash and I’ll put together a weekly sports podcast. I’ve got a buddy with some time on his hands; give us a studio and a producer who can handle technical stuff and we’ll create content. It’ll be good too.

But it won’t be just about sports. Because sports involves human beings and human beings are complicated. They want things like money, sex and respect. Athletes don’t divest themselves of their complicated humanity when they dress out.

Every game is played in a context. If you don’t consider that you’re not telling the whole story, you’re replaying highlights. A well-kept scorecard can be more interesting. You don’t really want sports to be just about the games. What you want is for them not to cause any irritation or derangement. What you want is to be coddled.

We could all use a little coddling from time to time. It’s a rough world out there, with lots of bad things happening, like homophobia and racism and overly militarized police departments occupying the communities they’re supposed to protect and serve. Maybe you think these things don’t affect you and maybe you’re lucky enough to be able to go through your day without worrying too much about anything more serious than whether LeBron James going to the Lakers makes the team a likely three or six seed in the West, but a lot of people aren’t that lucky.

One reason the alleged failure of Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer to properly handle domestic violence allegations against one of his assistant coaches (Zach Smith, the grandson of Earle Bruce, the Ohio State coach who mentored Meyer when he started out in coaching) is an important story is because Meyer holds himself out as a leader and an educator, not simply an expensive piece in an incredibly efficient revenue-generating machine. Meyer is a public employee, and there are Title IX obligations that require him to take certain actions in certain situations.

Since the victim in this case was Courtney Smith, then Zach Smith’s wife, it’s not entirely clear that he was obligated to do so, because Courtney was not a student or university employee, but a battered woman reaching out for help. And she only texted photos of her injuries to Meyer’s wife Shelley, not to the coach. So it is possible to argue—if not quite believe— that the coach didn’t know much about the situation until he fired Smith in July.

Courtney told reporter Brett McMurphy that Shelley knew about abusive incidents in 2009 and 2015 and that they often discussed the situation; Meyer says he didn’t learn about the 2015 incident until July, when he fired Smith after McMurphy reported on a history of abuse and Courtney filed a domestic violence civil protection order against him. Meyer has said he was aware of the 2009 incident when Smith was arrested for domestic violence while working as a graduate assistant for Meyer at the University of Florida.

“It came back to me that what was reported wasn’t actually what happened,” Meyer said when asked about the 2009 event at a press conference on July 24, the day after Smith was fired. “Shelley and I actually both got involved because of our relationship with that family and advised counseling and wanted to help as we moved forward.”

I don’t think Meyer was ignorant of Smith’s history, but if he was, it could only be because he wanted to not know. It was only because he was protected by subordinates who wanted the head coach to retain plausible deniability of the matter. Because he was a good coach who won a lot of games.

He should have known. His career at Ohio State is probably over—the only real question is whether he can be fired for cause, which would save the university a lot of money. What will probably happen is that they’ll negotiate a buyout.

And in a couple of years, he’ll be coaching again somewhere. Talking about his Christian faith and his principles of leadership.

Sports isn’t particularly plagued by hypocrites—most of us are hypocritical about something. Some pretend to get upset about athletes using “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a platform to voice concerns about serious issues while being too lazy to take off our ball caps while it plays.

So you want sports to be your safe place, where you can relax and watch your games and just not engage with any real world problems for a while? Ain’t gonna happen, Snowflake.