Did Ohio State’s Football Coach Overlook Domestic Abuse? 5 Lessons From an Investigation of Urban Meyer

Updated (8/24/2018, 6:29 p.m.) with additional comment from Urban Meyer apologizing for his earlier remarks.

By the time Ohio State University released a 23-page summary of an investigative team’s findings on Wednesday night, the lead investigator in the Urban Meyer inquiry had already told reporters there was no evidence that the head football coach had deliberately lied or tried to cover up allegations of domestic abuse against one of his assistants.

If Meyer had had solid evidence that a former assistant coach, Zach Smith, had abused his wife, Courtney Smith, the head coach would have reported it to the proper authorities, the report concluded. Investigators were impressed that Meyer shared the “respect for women core value” he tries to instill in his players, said Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor and partner with Debevoise & Plimpton, who led the investigation.

Based on those findings and a 10-hour Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday, President Michael V. Drake suspended Meyer without pay for the first three games of the season. Gene Smith, the university’s athletic director, was suspended without pay from August 31 to September 16.

Sports analysts and Buckeye fans were already debating whether the punishment — a compromise between firing Meyer and immediately reinstating him — was appropriate. Those questions only intensified with the report’s release. It raised significant questions about whether Meyer had lied about his knowledge of the abuse allegations against Zach Smith. Not only did Meyer mislead reporters last month at Big Ten Media Days by telling them he knew nothing about 2015 abuse allegations, but it’s hard to believe that his wife, Shelley Meyer, didn’t tell him about text messages she had received from Courtney Smith detailing the abuse she said she had been suffering for years, the report said.

In August an article on Facebook charged that Meyer had known about the abuse and had failed to act on it; after that, the report noted, the head coach talked with an administrator about the possibility of deleting old text messages from his phone. Meanwhile, Meyer appeared to turn a blind eye to a pattern of his assistant coach’s troubling behavior off the field, including promiscuous sexual behavior, drug use, and domestic violence, the report said.

But perhaps the most damning fallout, for Meyer, in the aftermath of the bombshell report, was the perception that he had shown little empathy for Courtney Smith. Given the opportunity to apologize to her, Meyer told the assembled media on Wednesday night that he was “just sorry we are in this situation.”

Here are five key takeaways from the investigation:

1. The investigators had doubts about whether Meyer was entirely truthful.

In 2009, while Zach Smith was working as a graduate assistant under Meyer at the University of Florida, Courtney, who was pregnant at the time, told police that her husband had picked her up and shoved her against a wall. After meeting with members of her husband’s family, she decided not to press charges.

Meyer told investigators that he met with Courtney and Zach Smith in his office, and they told him the abuse had never occurred. But Courtney told investigators that she hadn’t met with Meyer or retracted her abuse allegation. Zach Smith also told investigators that Courtney wasn’t at that meeting. The investigators sided with their accounts over Meyer’s.

“We find it more likely that only Zach Smith met with Coach Meyer in 2009, and that Courtney Smith likely did not recant her allegations of abuse at that time to Urban or Shelley Meyer, although it is clear that Courtney Smith decided not to pursue charges and that none were ever filed,” the report stated.

The investigators also had trouble believing that Meyer’s wife, Shelley, hadn’t discussed text messages and photos from Courtney Smith in 2015 in which she described being abused by her husband.

Shelley Meyer told investigators she didn’t pass the information along to her husband because she doubted the allegations were true, the report said. Meyer also told them he didn’t recall discussing the matter with his wife.

“Given the closeness of their relationship and Shelley’s concerns, we believe it is likely that Shelley and Urban Meyer had at least some communication about these allegations in late 2015 and were concerned about them, although both had doubts about the credibility of Courtney’s claims,” the report stated.

As for his initial denial that he knew anything about the 2015 abuse allegations, the investigators concluded that he didn’t deliberately lie.

“Although it is a close question and we cannot rule out that Coach Meyer was intentionally misleading in his answers, we do not ultimately find that he was,” the report said. “He clearly misspoke and made misstatements, but the reasons that happened are complex.”

2. The investigators take pains to explain memory problems Meyer apparently suffered.

Meyer told reporters in July that he had no knowledge of any domestic-abuse complaints against Smith in 2015. He later backtracked, saying he did in fact know about the complaints but wasn’t prepared to discuss personal details about one of his coaches with reporters.

The report said that Smith, the athletic director, prompted Meyer just before he talked to reporters that he should acknowledge that he knew about both the 2009 and 2015 reports. The report then went on to offer reasons Meyer’s memory may have clouded over.

“We accept that in July 2018 Coach Meyer was deeply absorbed in football season and wanted to focus on football at Big Ten Media Days,” it said. “The firing of Zach Smith the day before — the first time Coach Meyer had fired a coach — was also on his mind, as was the erroneous media report of a felony arrest of Zach Smith in 2015.”

That “erroneous media report” apparently referred to an August Facebook post by an independent sports reporter, Brett McMurphy. That article detailed the abuse Courtney Smith said she suffered, and contended that Meyer went to great lengths to look the other way.

In the original police report, a checked box indicated that Smith had been arrested. But the police released a revised report three years later in which the box was unchecked. A police spokeswoman said the terminology used in the original report was “inconsistent with what actually occurred.”

The report added: “We also learned during the investigation that Coach Meyer has sometimes had significant memory issues in other situations where he had prior extensive knowledge of events. He has also periodically taken medicine that can negatively impair his memory, concentration, and focus.”

3. He talked to a top football administrator about changing the settings on his phone to delete old text messages.

After McMurphy’s report was posted on Facebook, Brian Voltolini, Ohio State’s director of football operations, approached the coach on the practice field and warned him about a “bad article.”

“The two discussed at that time whether the media could get access to Coach Meyer’s phone, and specifically discussed how to adjust the settings on Meyer’s phone so that text messages older than one year would be deleted,” the report said.

When the university obtained the phone on August 2, there were no messages older than one year, and it was set to retain text messages “only for that period, as Coach Meyer and Brian Voltolini discussed.”

Investigators could not conclude that the settings were changed in response to the article. “It is nonetheless concerning that his first reaction to a negative media piece exposing his knowledge of the 2015-2016 law enforcement investigation was to worry about the media getting access to information and discussing how to delete messages older than a year,” the report stated, adding later, “Often, although not always, such reactions evidence consciousness of guilt.”

4. Meyer overlooked a pattern of troubling behavior by Zach Smith.

That behavior included “promiscuous and embarrassing sexual behavior, drug abuse, truancy, dishonesty, financial irresponsibility, a possible NCAA violation, and a lengthy police investigation into allegations of criminal domestic violence and cybercrimes,” the report said.

Asked about the off-field behavior, which included a 2013 drunken driving charge and running up a $600 bill at a strip club on a recruiting trip, Meyer said he was either unaware of the problems or had warned Smith to shape up.

“Repeatedly, Zach Smith’s conduct was met with reprimands and warnings by Coach Meyer, but never a written report, never an investigation and no disciplinary action until July 23, 2018. While we do not doubt that Coach Meyer respects women and is dedicated to fostering an environment of respect for women in his program, his apparent blind spot for Zach Smith seems to have impaired his judgment and his management of the behavior of at least one of his assistants.”

5. Perhaps the most damaging impression about Meyer left in the investigation’s aftermath was his apparent lack of sympathy for Courtney Smith.

At the end of the news conference, Meyer was asked whether he had any message for Courtney Smith. He side-stepped the opportunity to directly apologize to her.

“Well, I have a message for everyone involved in this,” Meyer said. “I’m sorry that we’re in this situation.” After a long pause, he added, “I’m just sorry we are in this situation.”

In a written statement on Friday evening, however, Meyer apologized for his earlier remarks, which he said did not show how seriously he takes domestic violence.

“I was taught at a very young age that if I ever hit a woman, I would be kicked out of the house and never welcomed back,” he said. “I have the same rule in my house and in the football program at Ohio State.”

He said he had worked hard to educate and remind players and coaches about the seriousness of relationship violence, and understands that his “lack of more action in this situation” has caused some to question his commitment.

“I extend my empathy to all women, men, and families who are affected by relationship violence,” Meyer said. “This has been a real learning experience for me. I fully intend to use my voice more effectively to be a part of the solution.”

He ended by saying: “Let me say here and now what I should have said on Wednesday: I sincerely apologize to Courtney Smith and her children for what they have gone through.”

For his part, Zach Smith’s lawyer, Brad Koffel, released a written statement to USA Today late Wednesday taking direct aim at the alleged victim.

“Zach Smith married a woman he should not have married,” Koffel said. “Vengeance against her ex-husband regrettably resulted in collateral damage to Urban Meyer, Gene Smith, and the Ohio State University. Trying cases in the media is a dangerous precedent for every other coach in America.”

Courtney Smith’s lawyer, Julia Leveridge, declined to comment on Thursday on both Koffel and Meyer’s statements. But earlier this month, she said that “blaming the victim only contributes to the stigma that is already present in our society today.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.