I knew Urban Meyer wouldn’t be fired.
I’ve said on numerous occasions (here, and here) that I didn’t think Ohio State would not fire Meyer because he wins too much. I didn’t think the school had the balls to do it, and needless to say I am pleased to know I was correct.
What I didn’t was the devil in the details, if you will.
I didn’t know that Meyer didn’t believe Courtney Smith’s allegation of a domestic violence event in 2006 at the hands of her husband Zach. I didn’t know that Meyer and Ohio State AD Gene Smith (who was also suspended) knew about a later string of domestic violence allegations regarding Zach Smith.
But what was the most damning was Meyer had a conversation with a staffer about deleting texts to hide them from the media. As a matter of fact, none of the texts on Meyer’s phone are older than a year.
And even though investigators didn’t say whether they think Meyer deleted specific groups of messages deliberately, it’s still a VERY bad look for Meyer. After all, what did he have to hide?
Look, I don’t know how big of a ding this would be on his legacy. Hell, if it were up to people like Sarah Spain and Stugotz, Meyer would wear the scarlet letter of coaching forever.
As for me, I still think he’s a great coach who made the mistake of having a blind spot for Zach Smith, who is legendary Ohio State coach Earle Bruce’s grandson. Since Bruce was a mentor to Meyer, the latter treated Zach like a son, and therefore kept him around much longer than he should have. It just make Meyer human. No harm, no foul.
And it didn’t help that Meyer chided that poor reporter a while back when he was asked if he knew of the 2015 alleged abuse Zach put on his wife. If Meyer was unsure of how to respond because, according to the investigators, he looked to AD Smith for guidance, he should have answered in a way that most – if not all – of this would have been avoided:
“No comment.”
Categories: college football
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