Urban Meyer suspended three games after investigation into handling of abuse allegations

A 28-23 Rose Bowl win over Washington on New Year’s Day was Urban Meyer’s last game as the head coach at Ohio State.

As it stands now, it was Meyer’s last game ever as a head coach, though his retirement announcement in December doesn’t mean that for sure. He’s previously retired and un-retired twice, and he could get plenty of jobs in the future if he wanted them.

This is part of what Urban Meyer will be officially doing after stepping aside from coaching following the Rose Bowl:

Despite what we all learned about his leadership during the scandal that will define the end of his coaching career, Meyer will teach a leadership course. Students will likely line up in droves to take it, as Meyer shares the lectern with a veteran.

On Dec. 4, Ohio State announced head coach Urban Meyer will retire after the Buckeyes’ Rose Bowl against Washington, with offensive coordinator Ryan Day taking over as the head coach.

Day served as the Buckeyes’ interim head coach during Meyer’s three-game suspension at the start of the season, following OSU’s investigation into Meyer’s handling of domestic abuse allegations against former longtime staffer Zach Smith.

College football reporter Brett McMurphy was one of the most public faces around Ohio State’s Zach Smith scandal, which led to Urban Meyer’s suspension for three games at the start of the 2018 season. Reporting by McMurphy was part of the impetus for Ohio State to fire Smith, who’d been accused of repeated domestic violence, and to commission its own investigation into how Meyer handled allegations against his longtime receivers coach.

As the 2018 season winds down, McMurphy’s made news about Meyer, Smith, and Ohio State again. On Tuesday, he reported for Stadium the 2017 transfer of a blue-chip Ohio State receiver might have been related to Smith using the N-word in a confrontation with that player. That runs counter to what Ohio State, the player involved, the player’s mother, and apparently the NCAA have agreed happened: that he transferred because of a family medical issue.

College sports generates a lot of scandals — real ones, in which people really get hurt as powerful leaders chase wins at any cost and those around them don’t or can’t speak up — as well as manufactured scandals over players getting paid or coaches recruiting incorrectly.

And so on.

Ohio State is playing at Penn State in Saturday’s biggest game, where the Nittany Lions are having the crowd wear white. The whiteout is a PSU tradition.

The Buckeyes made a graphic that, under most circumstances, would be a clever counter to “white noise”. It has since been deleted, but here’s a screencap of the image:

The Urban Meyer/Zach Smith story continued in late August with the release of documents from Ohio State, shortly before Meyer’s since-concluded partial suspension began.

The release didn’t include any text messages to or from Meyer that dated back to the time period surrounding the 2015 incident at the heart of the scandal.

Urban Meyer will be back on the sideline when Ohio State plays Tulane in Week 4. He has been with the team during practices for the last two weeks, while offensive coordinator Ryan Day has coached the team in games, including a big Week 3 win over TCU.

The morning after that game, ESPN aired an interview with Meyer, the coach’s first time facing any media since a press conference the day OSU suspended him, Aug. 22.

Ohio State fired receivers coach Zach Smith on July 23, after multiple domestic violations against Smith came to public light. Since then, more revelations have come out, and the school placing Meyer on paid administrative leave on Aug. 1.

On Aug. 22, Ohio State announced that Meyer will be suspended for the Buckeyes’ first three games of the season against Oregon State. Rutgers, and TCU.

Texas coach Tom Herman has existed off to the side of the story about how Ohio State dealt with domestic abuse allegations against former receivers coach Zach Smith.

Herman was the Buckeyes’ offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer from 2012-14, overlapping all three of those years with Smith. Herman was long gone by the time allegations against Smith came to public light in July 2018, having left for head coaching jobs at Houston and then Texas.

The conventional wisdom: if you want to bury some not-so-great news, put it out Friday evening, when much of the media and the audience has its guard down. In our 24/7 news cycle, the Friday newsdump means putting an entire weekend of coverage between your embarrassing admission and Monday morning, when most people will catch up on the last 2.5 days of news.

It is a tried-and-true strategy in politics and elsewhere.

Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer has been suspended for the first three games of the Buckeyes’ 2018 season, the school announced on Wednesday evening. The university also suspended athletic director Gene Smith for 17 days, a period that will keep Smith away from the athletic department for about as long as Meyer — through Week 3 of football season.

OSU opens its 2018 schedule against Oregon State, before games against Rutgers and TCU. Meyer can rejoin the team on Sept. 2, the day after that Oregon State opener, but will not coach the team during the games against Rutgers and TCU.

Urban Meyer’s penchant for second chances has long been well-known. From 2005 to 2010, Meyer’s Florida Gators were arrested 31 times. Some of those transgressions were dumb college stuff, other stuff was actual violence, or the threat of it. For better or worse, Meyer has always believed in his programs’ ability to change troubled players, with Utah RB Marty Johnson as the example he’d probably point to.

So it’s not necessarily shocking — whether we agree with it or not — that he gave Zach Smith a second chance following Smith’s 2009 domestic violence arrest, which didn’t result in charges. Meyer did not believe Smith “engaged in domestic violence in 2009,” partly due to the fact that Smith’s then-wife, Courtney, did not file a charge.

Just a few things to compare and contrast:

There have certainly been players who’ve gotten off light for actual offenses, and there have been coaches who’ve paid heavy prices for mistakes. Yep, Jim Tressel was outed for the first incident on this list — outed for lying about it to the NCAA, that is.

Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer will be suspended for the first three games of 2018, the school announced Wednesday in Columbus. It’s a partial suspension, as he can coach the team during the weeks before the latter two.

The punishment is the result of the university-commissioned investigation into Meyer’s handling of domestic violence allegations against longtime former assistant Zach Smith.

Ohio State suspended Urban Meyer for three Saturdays after an investigation into his handling of abuse allegations against former receivers coach Zach Smith. The university also suspended athletic director Gene Smith, who will return around the time Meyer does.

In deciding to suspend Meyer but not fire him, Ohio State leaned on a report by school-appointed investigators who found, among other things, Meyer didn’t lie when making controversial comments in July, shortly after he fired the WR coach.

On Aug. 22, Ohio State announced that Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer would be suspended for three games due to his handling of abuse allegations against former assistant Zach Smith. OSU’s first games of 2018 are home games against Oregon State and Rutgers, plus a game against TCU on Sept. 15 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Although Meyer will not be on the sidelines for the Buckeyes’ first three games, he will be with the team during practice ahead of the Rutgers and TCU games. He will not be able to travel with the team for the TCU game in Arlington, though.

Perhaps a bit buried in the news cycle thanks to another Big Ten East team, Ohio State’s investigation into the football program and Urban Meyer is in fact still going on. On August 7th, a two-week deadline was set by the special working group reviewing the case. On August 16th, Ohio State’s president Michael Drake said that the 21st is not a hard deadline.

But on August 17th, he announced that the investigation is on track to finish on the 21st and an official announcement of the findings could come in the following week.

Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer is on administrative leave as the university investigates how he handled domestic violence allegations against former assistant Zach Smith. The school stated it expects be done with its investigation in 14 days on Aug. 5.

On Aug. 11, Maryland put head coach DJ Durkin on administrative leave while the school investigates the circumstances surrounding the death of player Jordan McNair. The move came shortly after an ESPN report detailed a culture of pushing players dangerously beyond their limits.

College football reporter Brett McMurphy denied a report that said Tom Herman was the tipster who helped kick off his reporting on the ongoing scandal at Ohio State:

Tom Herman also denied it:

In a Facebook post, longtime Ohio State and college football author Jeff Snook reports Lynn Bruce — mother of fired Buckeyes wide receivers coach Zach Smith — argues against allegations that her son committed domestic abuse.

She says she witnessed Courtney Smith, the assistant’s ex-wife, being the aggressor in confrontations between the two, but that Zach Smith never resorted to intentional harm. Bruce accuses Courtney Smith of fabricating claims of him kidnapping their two children, and Bruce denies the charge that her father, former Buckeye head coach and Urban Meyer mentor Earle Bruce, stepped in to ask Courtney to drop a charge against Zach.

A group of Ohio State fans, who certainly do not represent the Buckeye fanbase on a whole, showed up outside of Ohio Stadium to rally for their suspended coach Monday evening. Urban Meyer remains on administrative leave as an investigation continues into his handling of domestic violence incidents involving his former receivers coach, Zach Smith.

Now, there are a few problems problem here.

In an open letter to Urban Meyer, my editor, Jason Kirk, crystalized the biggest unanswered question.

We’ve since learned that Meyer was aware of at least one 2015 domestic violence allegation (cops went to the Smiths’ house on two occasions regarding domestic violence claims within two weeks). In a late-Friday apology for misspeaking at Big Ten Media Days, Meyer said he ran an incident up the flagpole.

Urban Meyer remains on administrative leave from Ohio State as an independent board investigates his handling of domestic violence allegations against former OSU wide receiver coach Zach Smith. Meyer has now taken to Twitter to speak out for the first time during his leave.

Here in his statement in full: