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Ohio State Stood By Urban Meyer So He Could Walk Away
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Dec 5, 2018, 1:29:41 PM12/5/18
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In August, the university suspended Meyer for mishandling
accounts of domestic abuse involving a longtime staffer. That
decision was disappointing at the time—and may now be even more
puzzling in retrospect.
In the end, there was no benefit to Ohio State’s August decision
to retain Urban Meyer as head football coach after the world
found out that he was willing to protect an assistant who had
been named in multiple accounts of domestic violence. On
Tuesday, Meyer announced that he would retire after January’s
Rose Bowl matchup against Washington, a decision that is equal
parts shocking and expected. He said the choice was “the result
of cumulative events,” the biggest of which was his ongoing
health issues. Now, just like that, the school finds itself in
roughly the same position that it would’ve been in had it chosen
to get rid of Meyer over the summer.
The school’s new head coach will be 39-year-old Ryan Day?—?the
same man tapped to be the Buckeyes’ interim head coach when
Meyer was suspended for the first three games of this season.
Ohio State could’ve fired Meyer in August and still promoted Day
to be the program’s next permanent coach. The team looked
virtually the same in those games as the 10 coached by Meyer.
Ohio State’s season played out in almost identical fashion to
its 2017 campaign: It rolled to a blowout victory over Michigan,
captured a Big Ten championship, and lost an inexplicably
lopsided contest to an inferior conference opponent that kept
the team out of the College Football Playoff. The university’s
Board of Trustees met for nearly 11 hours on August 22 before
reaching its decision to merely suspend Meyer. It knew how bad
it’d look if it kept him, and only got to keep him for 11 more
games.
One might ask: Was it worth it? Was it worth it for Ohio State
to staunchly support a man who didn’t take action when informed
of multiple accounts of abuse involving an employee? Was it
worth it for Ohio State to jeopardize its reputation to protect
a man who would soon quit?
The answer is no. Ohio State officials, like those at so many
other schools, stuck their necks out to protect the supposed
Great Leader of Men who was the coach of their program’s
football team. Fans will sometimes argue that the wins are worth
it; pragmatists will sometimes argue that the money generated by
having a coach who wins is worth it. But in this case neither of
those things is accurate. Ohio State’s football and financial
results aren’t significantly better now than they would have
been if the powers that be had simply fired Meyer a few months
ago. Of course, keeping Meyer wouldn’t have been worth it if
Ohio State had won the damn national championship. It is never
worth it to do what is good for a football team over what is
right. But as it turns out, that wasn’t the whole calculus here.
By retaining Meyer this offseason, Ohio State wasn’t
prioritizing football success in 2018. It was prioritizing what
it wants the narrative about the past few years to become, and
it was giving the people currently in power the opportunity to
preserve it.
Meyer has abruptly resigned before, in 2010, when he walked away
from a Florida program he led to two national championships.
Back then, Meyer cited a heart scare that sent him to the
hospital and his desire to take the stress of coaching out of
his life; with this resignation, Meyer is citing a congenital
arachnoid cyst in his brain that “has led to severe headaches at
times in his career.” Some have said that Meyer used medical
issues as an excuse to leave both jobs at convenient times, but
I don’t think that’s fair. When Meyer was doubled over in pain
during games this season, he didn’t seem like a man who was
faking it to give himself an easy out.
Similarly, Meyer’s mishandling of former Ohio State receivers
coach Zach Smith has been equated with Meyer’s generally lenient
stance toward player wrongdoing at Florida. This, too, is a
mistake. As I wrote in August, most of the things Meyer’s Gators
players did were typical college-student idiocy: smoking weed
and getting in drunken fights. The few serious incidents were
met with suspensions or expulsions.
This is completely different than Meyer repeatedly protecting
his protegé and family friend Smith, who is the grandson of
Meyer’s mentor, Earle Bruce. Meyer continued to employ Smith as
an assistant coach even as the stories about Smith and domestic
violence piled up. At Big Ten media days in July, Meyer told
reporters that he’d lacked prior knowledge of a 2015 incident in
which Courtney Smith, Zach Smith’s ex-wife, said that Zach
pushed her against a wall and wrapped his hands around her neck
while their then-3-year-old daughter clung to her leg. The
school’s investigation later found this to be dishonest, even if
it tried to pin it on Meyer having “significant memory issues in
other situations where he had prior extensive knowledge of
events.” Ohio State held that Meyer didn’t “deliberately lie.”
I believe that Meyer was deliberately lying. There is plenty of
reporting that shows Meyer knew about the Smith incidents as
they happened. I don’t believe that Meyer forgot everything bad
his longtime assistant had done at the most convenient moment. I
believe that Ohio State should have fired Meyer for protecting
Smith. Instead, the school doubled down on Meyer.
Meyer is one of the winningest head coaches in college football
history. He has gone 186–32 with three national titles over his
Division I career, including 82–9 with one national championship
in his Ohio State tenure. Perhaps of greatest importance to the
Buckeyes fan base, he has never lost to rival Michigan. Yet it’s
oversimplifying things to conclude that the university kept
Meyer this summer because he was a winning coach. In fact, at an
afternoon press conference in Columbus, Meyer admitted as much.
On Tuesday, power was smoothly transferred from one Ohio State
employee to another Ohio State employee while a third Ohio State
employee, athletic director Gene Smith, talked about overseeing
that transition of power. Meyer revealed that he had been
contemplating retirement since last season, and had been
discussing the plan for his exit with Smith for more than a
month. When asked about this, Meyer offered the following:
“There was conversation before this year. Ryan [Day], like I
told you, last January had a chance to become a head football
coach at a pretty impressive place. I met with Gene, and you
know, and I knew this isn’t something I’m gonna do for the next
15 years, 10 years. I knew after the experiences I had on the
sideline again and in 2014 just dealing with headaches that I
wanted to do Ohio State right, and Gene Smith right. So I
would’ve probably thought not this year but it was within the
next few.”
Ohio State wasn’t trying to buy a long-term future with Meyer
when it chose to keep him around. He didn’t even plan to stay
for more than a few years, and people at the school knew that.
Meyer was retained to eventually ease the transition to the man
who would become his successor.
Everyone involved with this arrangement is satisfied. Meyer gets
to retire instead of getting fired in disgrace. Smith, who hired
Meyer, does not have the stain of hiring somebody who turned out
to be a disgrace. (If coaches get fired, athletic directors tend
to get fired with them.) And the Buckeyes’ new head coach, Day,
gets to serve as a continuation of Meyer’s legacy and Smith’s
decision to hire Meyer. Ohio State can say that it moved from
the glorious Meyer era?—?in which the Buckeyes went a sparkling
54–4 in Big Ten play?—?into an era led by a Meyer disciple.
But Ohio State doesn’t need a clean transition of power. Just
seven years ago, the Buckeyes experienced just about the
roughest coaching change imaginable. After parting ways with Jim
Tressel over TattooGate, the school had a rare losing season
under interim coach Luke Fickell. And guess what. Ohio State
rode Cardale Jones, Ezekiel Elliott, and Joey Bosa to a national
title three years later. Ohio State is a football powerhouse,
and will remain one regardless of whether a coaching transition
is sloppy.
If Ohio State had retained Meyer in August because the school
considered on-field wins more valuable than a clean conscience,
that would have been shameful enough. But I think that
undersells what happened. The power structures in college
football are designed by powerful men, and have long served to
protect powerful men. In this case, they protected Meyer for
protecting another man, all as part of a larger effort to
protect even more powerful men.
Ohio State didn’t keep Meyer around for a bunch of national
championship celebrations. It kept him around for today: a quiet
departure that lets the machine around him keep humming.
One of the bandits who failed his "leadership" training will put
a bullet in his head during a liquor store robbery.
https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/4/18126500/urban-meyer-retires-
ohio-state-buckeyes-football-coach
accounts of domestic abuse involving a longtime staffer. That
decision was disappointing at the time—and may now be even more
puzzling in retrospect.
In the end, there was no benefit to Ohio State’s August decision
to retain Urban Meyer as head football coach after the world
found out that he was willing to protect an assistant who had
been named in multiple accounts of domestic violence. On
Tuesday, Meyer announced that he would retire after January’s
Rose Bowl matchup against Washington, a decision that is equal
parts shocking and expected. He said the choice was “the result
of cumulative events,” the biggest of which was his ongoing
health issues. Now, just like that, the school finds itself in
roughly the same position that it would’ve been in had it chosen
to get rid of Meyer over the summer.
The school’s new head coach will be 39-year-old Ryan Day?—?the
same man tapped to be the Buckeyes’ interim head coach when
Meyer was suspended for the first three games of this season.
Ohio State could’ve fired Meyer in August and still promoted Day
to be the program’s next permanent coach. The team looked
virtually the same in those games as the 10 coached by Meyer.
Ohio State’s season played out in almost identical fashion to
its 2017 campaign: It rolled to a blowout victory over Michigan,
captured a Big Ten championship, and lost an inexplicably
lopsided contest to an inferior conference opponent that kept
the team out of the College Football Playoff. The university’s
Board of Trustees met for nearly 11 hours on August 22 before
reaching its decision to merely suspend Meyer. It knew how bad
it’d look if it kept him, and only got to keep him for 11 more
games.
One might ask: Was it worth it? Was it worth it for Ohio State
to staunchly support a man who didn’t take action when informed
of multiple accounts of abuse involving an employee? Was it
worth it for Ohio State to jeopardize its reputation to protect
a man who would soon quit?
The answer is no. Ohio State officials, like those at so many
other schools, stuck their necks out to protect the supposed
Great Leader of Men who was the coach of their program’s
football team. Fans will sometimes argue that the wins are worth
it; pragmatists will sometimes argue that the money generated by
having a coach who wins is worth it. But in this case neither of
those things is accurate. Ohio State’s football and financial
results aren’t significantly better now than they would have
been if the powers that be had simply fired Meyer a few months
ago. Of course, keeping Meyer wouldn’t have been worth it if
Ohio State had won the damn national championship. It is never
worth it to do what is good for a football team over what is
right. But as it turns out, that wasn’t the whole calculus here.
By retaining Meyer this offseason, Ohio State wasn’t
prioritizing football success in 2018. It was prioritizing what
it wants the narrative about the past few years to become, and
it was giving the people currently in power the opportunity to
preserve it.
Meyer has abruptly resigned before, in 2010, when he walked away
from a Florida program he led to two national championships.
Back then, Meyer cited a heart scare that sent him to the
hospital and his desire to take the stress of coaching out of
his life; with this resignation, Meyer is citing a congenital
arachnoid cyst in his brain that “has led to severe headaches at
times in his career.” Some have said that Meyer used medical
issues as an excuse to leave both jobs at convenient times, but
I don’t think that’s fair. When Meyer was doubled over in pain
during games this season, he didn’t seem like a man who was
faking it to give himself an easy out.
Similarly, Meyer’s mishandling of former Ohio State receivers
coach Zach Smith has been equated with Meyer’s generally lenient
stance toward player wrongdoing at Florida. This, too, is a
mistake. As I wrote in August, most of the things Meyer’s Gators
players did were typical college-student idiocy: smoking weed
and getting in drunken fights. The few serious incidents were
met with suspensions or expulsions.
This is completely different than Meyer repeatedly protecting
his protegé and family friend Smith, who is the grandson of
Meyer’s mentor, Earle Bruce. Meyer continued to employ Smith as
an assistant coach even as the stories about Smith and domestic
violence piled up. At Big Ten media days in July, Meyer told
reporters that he’d lacked prior knowledge of a 2015 incident in
which Courtney Smith, Zach Smith’s ex-wife, said that Zach
pushed her against a wall and wrapped his hands around her neck
while their then-3-year-old daughter clung to her leg. The
school’s investigation later found this to be dishonest, even if
it tried to pin it on Meyer having “significant memory issues in
other situations where he had prior extensive knowledge of
events.” Ohio State held that Meyer didn’t “deliberately lie.”
I believe that Meyer was deliberately lying. There is plenty of
reporting that shows Meyer knew about the Smith incidents as
they happened. I don’t believe that Meyer forgot everything bad
his longtime assistant had done at the most convenient moment. I
believe that Ohio State should have fired Meyer for protecting
Smith. Instead, the school doubled down on Meyer.
Meyer is one of the winningest head coaches in college football
history. He has gone 186–32 with three national titles over his
Division I career, including 82–9 with one national championship
in his Ohio State tenure. Perhaps of greatest importance to the
Buckeyes fan base, he has never lost to rival Michigan. Yet it’s
oversimplifying things to conclude that the university kept
Meyer this summer because he was a winning coach. In fact, at an
afternoon press conference in Columbus, Meyer admitted as much.
On Tuesday, power was smoothly transferred from one Ohio State
employee to another Ohio State employee while a third Ohio State
employee, athletic director Gene Smith, talked about overseeing
that transition of power. Meyer revealed that he had been
contemplating retirement since last season, and had been
discussing the plan for his exit with Smith for more than a
month. When asked about this, Meyer offered the following:
“There was conversation before this year. Ryan [Day], like I
told you, last January had a chance to become a head football
coach at a pretty impressive place. I met with Gene, and you
know, and I knew this isn’t something I’m gonna do for the next
15 years, 10 years. I knew after the experiences I had on the
sideline again and in 2014 just dealing with headaches that I
wanted to do Ohio State right, and Gene Smith right. So I
would’ve probably thought not this year but it was within the
next few.”
Ohio State wasn’t trying to buy a long-term future with Meyer
when it chose to keep him around. He didn’t even plan to stay
for more than a few years, and people at the school knew that.
Meyer was retained to eventually ease the transition to the man
who would become his successor.
Everyone involved with this arrangement is satisfied. Meyer gets
to retire instead of getting fired in disgrace. Smith, who hired
Meyer, does not have the stain of hiring somebody who turned out
to be a disgrace. (If coaches get fired, athletic directors tend
to get fired with them.) And the Buckeyes’ new head coach, Day,
gets to serve as a continuation of Meyer’s legacy and Smith’s
decision to hire Meyer. Ohio State can say that it moved from
the glorious Meyer era?—?in which the Buckeyes went a sparkling
54–4 in Big Ten play?—?into an era led by a Meyer disciple.
But Ohio State doesn’t need a clean transition of power. Just
seven years ago, the Buckeyes experienced just about the
roughest coaching change imaginable. After parting ways with Jim
Tressel over TattooGate, the school had a rare losing season
under interim coach Luke Fickell. And guess what. Ohio State
rode Cardale Jones, Ezekiel Elliott, and Joey Bosa to a national
title three years later. Ohio State is a football powerhouse,
and will remain one regardless of whether a coaching transition
is sloppy.
If Ohio State had retained Meyer in August because the school
considered on-field wins more valuable than a clean conscience,
that would have been shameful enough. But I think that
undersells what happened. The power structures in college
football are designed by powerful men, and have long served to
protect powerful men. In this case, they protected Meyer for
protecting another man, all as part of a larger effort to
protect even more powerful men.
Ohio State didn’t keep Meyer around for a bunch of national
championship celebrations. It kept him around for today: a quiet
departure that lets the machine around him keep humming.
One of the bandits who failed his "leadership" training will put
a bullet in his head during a liquor store robbery.
https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/4/18126500/urban-meyer-retires-
ohio-state-buckeyes-football-coach
J. Hugh Sullivan
Dec 5, 2018, 3:05:44 PM12/5/18
to
On Wed, 5 Dec 2018 19:15:11 +0100 (CET), "DF" <d...@example.org> wrote:
>In August, the university suspended Meyer for mishandling
>accounts of domestic abuse involving a longtime staffer. That
>decision was disappointing at the time—and may now be even more
>puzzling in retrospect.
Meyer is gone. Except for Irish Mike continuing to eulogize him there
>In August, the university suspended Meyer for mishandling
>accounts of domestic abuse involving a longtime staffer. That
>decision was disappointing at the time—and may now be even more
>puzzling in retrospect.
is little point IMO to continue chastising the deceased equine.
Hugh
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