Ohio State Hits Football Coach With 3-Game Suspension for Not Reporting Alleged Abuse

Ohio State University’s embattled head football coach, Urban Meyer, on Wednesday was suspended without pay for the first three games of the season after a two-week investigation concluded that he had known about, but had failed to adequately address, reports of domestic abuse by one of his assistant coaches.

The university’s president, Michael V. Drake, announced his decision after a marathon meeting with the 20-member Board of Trustees, which had spent 10 hours reviewing the findings of the investigation and contemplating an appropriate response.

The university’s athletics director, Gene Smith, who had been told about the domestic-abuse accusations but had failed to notify the appropriate compliance officers, was suspended from August 31 through September 16.

Meyer was placed on paid administrative leave on August 1 after a news report indicated that he had been aware of domestic-abuse allegations against the assistant coach, Zach Smith, but had not relayed them to the proper authorities. Meyer fired Smith, the Buckeyes’ wide-receivers coach, last month after Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney, sought a protective court order against him. The Smiths are not related to Gene Smith.

“Although neither Urban Meyer nor Gene Smith condoned or covered up the alleged domestic abuse by Zach Smith, they failed to take sufficient management action relating to Zach Smith’s misconduct and retained an assistant coach who was not performing as an appropriate role model for OSU student-athletes,” a summary of the investigative findings said. “Permitting such misconduct to continue is not consistent with the values of the university and reflects poorly on Coach Meyer, Athletic Director Smith, and the university.”

According to insiders in the Meyer case, a decision on his fate was delayed by a rift between the president, who reportedly wanted Meyer to serve a suspension, and the trustees, who wanted him rehired immediately. Meyer reportedly was fighting the suspension, saying he felt he had done nothing wrong.

CliffsNotes version (from what I’ve been told): Ohio State’s BoT wants to reinstate Urban Meyer immediately. University president Michael Drake is balking at that; wants Meyer to serve a suspension. Meyer refuses to serve suspension since he thinks he did nothing wrong. #Buckeyes

— Dave Biddle (@davebiddle) August 22, 2018

However, at a 9 p.m. news conference, 12 hours after the trustees’ meeting had convened, Meyer accepted full responsibility for failing to follow through on reports about Smith. He said he had accepted the president’s decision to suspend him without pay through September 2.

“I followed my heart and not my head,” Meyer said. “At each juncture, I gave Zach the benefit of the doubt. I should have demanded more from him and recognized red flags.”

He said the decision to fire Smith was hard because Smith’s grandfather had been a close mentor to Meyer.

The investigative team agreed, writing that “Coach Meyer and Athletic Director Smith’s efforts to help Zach Smith overcome his personal issues went too far in allowing him to remain as an employee in the face of repeated misconduct.”

A Changed Statement

Buckeye fans joined the throngs of reporters outside the building where the discussions were taking place as the meeting stretched into the evening, and restless fans took to Twitter.

The Board of Trustees meeting at Ohio State is going to get real once they’re in hour 17 and are ordering PJ’s.

— SB (@Sam_Blazer) August 22, 2018

This Ohio State Board meeting is Urban Meyer’s punishment.

— Taco Shawn Juan (@lvilleshawn) August 22, 2018

The working group the trustees appointed to investigate the allegations against Meyer included three current trustees as well as a former Ohio House speaker, a former acting U.S. deputy attorney general, and a former federal prosecutor.

Mary Jo White, a partner in the law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton, led the investigation, which included interviews with more than 40 witnesses and the examination of some 60,000 electronic documents and 10,000 pages of text messages.

White said at the news conference that despite what Meyer told reporters during Big Ten Media Day, both he and the athletics director were aware of a law-enforcement investigation in 2015 of domestic abuse, and had failed to report it to university compliance officers.

“Because they believed Zach Smith’s denials and because there was no charge or arrest in connection with the 2015-2016 events, neither Coach Meyer nor AD Smith believed that there had been a violation or a potential violation of the law” and therefore didn’t feel they needed to report what they knew about the investigation, the report stated. In the future, the university should make it clear that because many victims of domestic abuse don’t press charges, the absense of an arrest doesn’t mean the abuse didn’t happen, the investigators said.

White said the panel had concluded that Meyer hadn’t deliberately lied about his knowledge of the case and that the commitment of both Meyer and Gene Smith toward women was genuine.

A summary of the findings said that “Coach Meyer has ‘a sincere commitment to the Respect for Women core values that he espouses and tries to instill in his players,’” and that he wouldn’t hesitate to fire a coach “if spousal abuse was established.”

At issue during the investigation was what Meyer knew about the accusations against his assistant, and when he knew it.

Meyer said he had been aware of a domestic-abuse complaint made in 2009 by Courtney Smith, who was then pregnant. At the time, Zach Smith was a graduate assistant working under Meyer at the University of Florida. Smith was not charged with a crime, and Meyer said he and his wife urged the Smiths to seek counseling.

Speaking to reporters, Meyer initially denied knowing anything about another incident, in 2015, while Smith was working for him at Ohio State. Courtney Smith said her husband had shoved her against a wall and put his hands around her neck, actions that Zach Smith later denied.

Meyer’s statement changed after Brett McMurphy, an independent sports reporter, described on Facebook how Courtney Smith had told Meyer’s wife, Shelley, about the alleged abuse, and had encouraged her to tell her husband. Meyer then conceded, in a statement on Twitter, that he had known about the 2015 allegation.

Meyer said he was confident he had taken appropriate action but had “failed” in how he’d discussed it at Big Ten Media Day because he wasn’t prepared to talk about sensitive personnel information with reporters. He added that he had always followed proper reporting protocols when informed of allegations of abuse by an athlete, coach, or staff member.

‘I’m a Different Person’

Media attention surrounding Meyer’s fate has been intense as the Buckeyes prepare to open their season on September 1. Meyer is one of the winningest coaches in college football, and his team is considered the favorite in the Big Ten Conference. Some critics viewed a three-game suspension at the start of the season as a slap on the wrist since early games are typically against lower-ranked opponents.

Some sports analysts viewed Meyer’s suspension as evidence that universities are less inclined today to sweep reports of domestic abuse under the rug.

Similar criticism for failing to report an assistant coach’s abuse was leveled in 2016 against Mike MacIntyre, the head coach at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was ordered to donate money to an anti-domestic-violence group, but remained on the job.

In an interview with ESPN, Smith said he had told Meyer about the abuse allegations in 2015.

“I explained both sides of the story,” Smith said in the interview. “I volunteered to do that. I didn’t ever hit her. He said, ‘If you hit her, you are fired immediately.’ I looked at him and said, ‘If I hit her, I wouldn’t come in here. I know how you feel about that. If I hit her, I wouldn’t even come to work. I would know it’s over.’”

Meyer was asked during Wednesday’s news conference whether he regretting bringing Zach Smith to Ohio State, knowing about the earlier allegations of domestic abuse, and whether he and the athletics director would approach hiring decisions differently.

“This has been a learning experience,” Meyer said, “I’m a different person. … my awareness of domestic violence has grown.” In the future, he said, “I will not make any hiring without having a complete dialogue with Gene and being completely aware of what we’re getting into.”

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.