AN URBAN MYTH
Ohio St. ignored Meyer’s spotty past
HUDDLE UP! OK, everybody play stupid, on three! . . . Hut! Hut! Hut! We don’t yet know what Urban Meyer knew or didn’t know, did or didn’t do, but we know what we have known from the day in Nov. 2011, when Ohio St. signed him: He wasn’t hired because he runs clean programs.
Meyer’s proclamations of being a deeply spiritual man always reminded me of Sinclair Lewis’s “Elmer Gantry,” a faith-based phony.
Throughout the six seasons, 2005-10, he led University of Florida football, he recruited then indulged “student-athletes” who had no business being in college other than winning football games, making bail and making him lots of money. Those were the wink-and-nod terms of his agreement.
Under Meyer, UF players were arrested at least 31 times. They included Aaron Hernandez, future Patriots’ TE who died in prison after being convicted of murder.
In 2011, Meyer took a year off. To do what? To join ESPN, naturally.
And every man and woman with ESPN, CBS, FOX who kissed his National Championship rings while pretending not to know that Meyer represents anything better than the deeply compromised — and were paid to pretend that we didn’t know — can save their current breath and surprise.
In 2012 Meyer landed at Ohio St., his alma mater and a state school, for obscene money and a reported $21 million buyout clause to do the same as he did at UF: win, whatever it takes.
And Meyer has met that single term of engagement, again with full scholarship recruits who lose valuable practice time to police matters and depart the University as socially deficient citizens, the likes of Ezekiel Elliott.
There is no scandal so large or so lasting that it can reverse the reality of Division I basketball and football, of schools operating as fronts for teams, known in other businesses and to district attorneys as racketeering.
Despite the pedophile scandal at Penn State, we-see-nothing sexual abuse and criminal misconduct transferred to Baylor, Michigan State, Louisville. The SEC now requires training to discourage recruits from committing sexual assaults. Imagine recruiting those who don’t yet know.
How did Southern Cal respond to one of its assistant basketball coaches being indicted in that adidas/FBI bribery case? Well, it fired that coach then hired one who just happens to be the father of two Top 40 high school players, which seems another form of bribery.
Is there one among us who feels that the 18-years of no-show classes for varsity athletes at North Carolina, as facilitated by a professor of ethics, no less, is unique to UNC?
Did Meyer know that one of his longtime assistant coaches is an accused recidivist wife-beater? That’s not the question or the issue. Rather, it’s did Ohio State know that in Meyer they were hiring a coach who won — and was allowed to win — national championships through the recruitment and indulgence of young men who had no legitimate business being granted full scholarships and the title “Student-Athletes”?
Was Meyer known before he was hired by OSU to run a clean operation?
Well, if I knew, and you knew the answer, and ESPN and the rest of the pandering TV hoards only pretended not to know, then Ohio State knew. Next!