Ohio State’s actions a weak reply
The saddest part of watching Urban Meyer’s Hall of Fame coaching career devolve into a 23-page report that depicts him as a serial liar, aspiring coverup artist and reckless personnel manager who protected a risky employee is that human beings actually read what was on paper and concluded he should remain as the coach at Ohio State.
At least now it makes sense why it took 11 hours of deliberations Wednesday before the board of trustees settled on a three-game suspension for Meyer: A group of serious, successful people had to come to terms with a decision that was decidedly unserious in the name of King Football.
What’s remarkable, however, about Ohio State’s decision to retain Meyer despite a rather overwhelming narrative in the investigative findings that would have brought down practically anyone else is the utter lack of self-confidence displayed by one of the top five college football programs of all time.
In other words, the conclusion Wednesday was that Ohio State University needed Meyer more than Meyer needed Ohio State University, which isn’t just an embarrassment for one of the top public institutions in the country but a failure to understand its own history and a lack of faith in its brand.
Ohio State has been good at football for a half-century.
The Buckeyes were competing for national titles long before Meyer arrived and will do so long after he leaves.
The institutional investment in winning football games is too deep, and the advantages of history and geography too powerful, for Ohio State to ever be reliant on one person for its success.
And yet Ohio State is apparently so afraid of what happens after Meyer that it was willing to all but ignore the findings of its $500,000 report, which offered a crystal clear road map to fire him, perhaps even with cause.
Even if you strip away Courtney Smith’s domestic violence accusations — which Meyer was obviously skeptical of based on his responses to the investigators and his lack of compassion at the news conference Wednesday night — just think about what the report was able to corroborate.
How many times over the years did Meyer sit in his office, asking himself what would happen if Zach Smith’s behavior ever became known outside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center?
Surely Meyer had those thoughts in 2014 when he learned, according to the report, that his wide receivers coach had rung up a $600 bill at a strip club with one, or perhaps multiple, high school coaches while on a recruiting trip in Miami.
But instead of firing an eminently replaceable employee, he changed his coaches’ manual, issued a warning and failed to report the misconduct to his athletics director.
Surely Meyer had those thoughts in 2015 and 2016 when Smith was late to practices and workouts and skipped scheduled recruiting visits he falsely claimed he’d made, leading athletics director Gene Smith to suggest firing him.
Surely Meyer had those thoughts in 2016 when Smith was admitted to a drug treatment facility for “addiction to a stimulant prescription drug used to treat ADHD” and, again, didn’t inform his athletics director.
But time after time, Meyer failed to take drastic action, never mind what should have been obvious warning signs about a domestic abuse history with multiple allegations and a sexual relationship with an Ohio State football secretary that Meyer might or might not have known about.
Even if you accept the investigative report’s conclusion that Meyer didn’t know about that relationship and the other lewd sexual activities occurring at the OSU football facilities, what does it say about the culture of Buckeyes football that the people who did know thought it was more important to protect Smith than to report it to Meyer?
When you add it up, the bare minimum takeaway is that Meyer failed to properly manage an employee who wasn’t just problematic but a massive human resources risk.
Every day Smith showed up to work, he presented the potential to drag Meyer personally and the Ohio State football program into a legal, moral and human resources morass.