- Oct 21, 2014
- 1,750
- 1,917
OSU Saga: Meyer suspended for 3 games
- Thread starter BMF
- Start date
- Nov 29, 2015
- 4,089
- 6,049
Yes I agree, I was just separating from the title IX discussion ...., in that these organizations all have detailed policy requirements to protect themselves from potential sanctions/liabilities as well as protecting victims. Whether part of IX or other issues.
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16,324
- 14,771
Founding Member
We all know the investigation wasn't to find what he did wrong, but find a way to keep him on as coach. If he was a 7-6 coach and the same events happened, he would have been fired 2 weeks ago.
- Jun 14, 2014
- 7,391
- 9,046
Founding Member
I have a feeling that although this may have been "taken care of" by the pOSU admin, not sure that it will be the end of it. If at any time the wheels come off the Bucknut train this year (couple of losses, etc.) it will rear its ugly head again. We all know how Urbs handles pressure. Just speculation, but he got a pass and not sure he'll do the best with it. But he's the HC, so it falls at his door.
- Jun 11, 2014
- 16,754
- 20,381
Founding Member
Given how Urban responds when pissed off, they may very well make the playoffs this year
Bama&GatorFan
Friends in high places
- Dec 5, 2015
- 715
- 554
Meyer is a dishonest liar with no personal integrity. If this is the kind of mentor and coach that Ohio state wants for their young athletes, then let them have him. I hope they lose every game.
What kind of parents would want their son influenced by him?
What kind of parents would want their son influenced by him?
- Jun 9, 2014
- 78,409
- 110,729
Founding Member
You (and Instiwifebeater) are mixing mixing concepts.
- Jun 9, 2014
- 78,409
- 110,729
Founding Member
Too bad someone didnt do a phone dump on that phone he deleted.
He wasnt smart enough to Hillary it with a soedge hammer and even so his backups are there.
- Jun 11, 2014
- 16,754
- 20,381
Founding Member
No, i’m changing the subject, and trying to learn about something
Ocalaman
Well-Known Member
- Mar 7, 2018
- 756
- 1,029
Friday, August 24, 2018
University presidents: Don't follow Ohio State's lead, or else
By Ian O'Connor
If you listen closely enough, you can hear college administrators across America flipping through this new Ohio State playbook that just arrived in the mail:
Place highly successful but besieged football coach on paid leave.
Hire important-sounding people with supposedly unimpeachable integrity to investigate him.
Call their probe independent every day and twice on Sunday.
And then wait for said probe to run a dizzying series of end-arounds on the truth to save poor Supercoach's job.
Only here's a message for those administrators who think Ohio State just set a wonderful precedent for the next Touchdown Tech forced by public disclosures to put its most visible representative on trial: Don't do it. Don't sell your university's soul for the sake of a few extra glorious Saturdays in the fall. Don't reduce your fine institution to a practical joke by taking a futile stab at crisis management, and by keeping the coach who protected his staff and program at a significant human cost.
Urban Meyer
OSU's investigation was about putting Urban Meyer back on the field and pursuing titles.
The nation isn't laughing with Buckeye Nation, but at Buckeye Nation. Or at least at the university officials who decided that Meyer deserved a mere three-game suspension for allowing wide receivers coach Zach Smith, an alleged repeat domestic abuser and confirmed serial screw-up, to remain on his staff for as long as he did.
Remember, it didn't take long for Meyer to show his employers that they had settled on a pathetically inadequate penalty. In the immediate wake of the announcement, Meyer read his initial statement of regret with all the emotion of someone reading a grocery list. He was asked in a news conference if he had a message for Courtney Smith, the woman who first accused her then-husband Zach of abuse while she was pregnant and Zach was an assistant under Meyer at Florida in 2009. The Ohio State coach didn't even have the decency to speak her name while spreading his message "to everyone involved" that he is "sorry that we're in this situation."
Rarely does a public figure so clearly declare exactly who he is and what he stands for, or doesn't stand for.
Deep down, Meyer had to know he deserved to be fired. He had to know that a mediocre coach with a mediocre record wouldn't have lasted long enough for Oho State to run an independent investigation that could never truly be independent, and could never truly return a recommendation and/or verdict independent of Meyer's 6-0 record against Michigan.
He escaped for the obvious reasons. Before the Big Ten season got underway, THE Ohio State University diagrammed THE most predictable play call of the year by sparing Meyer's job and enabling him as much as he had enabled his wide receivers coach, whose workplace conduct would've gotten him kicked out of most frat houses around the country, never mind the offices of a state institution. So Meyer exercised his restored clout at his presser when pressed about Courtney Smith, and apologized to his face-painted base about a "situation" that distracted "everyone involved" from the central mission of winning football games.
The major college sports machine churns on, stopping for nothing and nobody in its path. Just another sad and disturbing development at another big-time school with a moral compass gone awry in pursuit of victory and the desired revenue streams attached. You need a scorecard to keep track of this scandal and that one. If it isn't federal agents chasing the money men buying talent in college basketball, it's a Maryland administration trying to explain how an overheated football player could die on the watch of the alleged educators hired to coach him.
Once upon a time, Urban Meyer ran a football program at Florida defined by dominance on the field and so much noise away from it. The New York Times reported that Meyer's players were arrested at least 31 times between 2005 and 2010. Aaron Hernandez had caused Meyer so much trouble in Gainesville that the coach told one NFL team that it would be unwise to draft him. "Don't f- - -ing touch that guy," was the way the Florida coach put it. Meyer told the NFL team Hernandez was too big of a character risk to employ despite the fact that Meyer himself had benched the tight end for a grand total of one game out of 40 at Florida.
While working for ESPN in between coaching jobs, Meyer told one former NFL executive and media analyst that he was "tired of dealing with the police all the time" and that he yearned to "coach good kids." But in Meyer's world, the kids weren't a bigger problem than the man recruiting them.
Zach Smith
Zach Smith's pattern of troubling behavior was overlooked by Urban Meyer and OSU.
Ohio State's elders knew what they were getting when they hired Meyer in 2011 -- a national championship coach, one of the best of his generation at identifying and developing talent. But they also knew they were getting a head coach who ran a reckless program, and who didn't live by the codes of honor he talked about, wrote about, and posted in capital letters on team facility walls. This was a man, after all, who needed to sign a contract with his wife and children promising that he wouldn't again get swallowed whole by the monster that is elite D-I sports.
So in keeping Meyer, Ohio State covered for Ohio State and tried and failed to wish away the work done by an enterprising journalist, Brett McMurphy, who published damning texts and photos. In fact, to read the university's own 23-page summary of its findings is to read a clear-cut case for the coach's termination.
Investigators did not believe Urban Meyer's claim that Courtney Smith met with him (along with her husband) in 2009, and did not believe Meyer's claim that Smith recanted her allegation at the time. Investigators also did not believe Meyer's claim that he had no communication with his wife, Shelley, about the 2015 texts and photos Courtney shared with Shelley in discussing another alleged assault by the assistant coach.
Investigators also determined that Meyer had discussed with a staffer adjusting the settings on his phone to delete texts that were more than a year old (his examined phone turned up no messages older than a year), a reaction they concluded often "evidence consciousness of guilt." Investigators said they were concerned and troubled by many of Meyer's actions, or inactions, in this case, and their summary makes it clear to a right-minded reader that Meyer violated contract language calling for termination for bringing the university "into public disrepute, embarrassment, contempt, scandal or ridicule or failure by Coach to conform Coach's personal conduct to conventional and contemporary standards of good citizenship..."
But as the investigation closed, the home team's assigned judge and jury excused and rationalized Meyer's behavior at every turn, even suggesting that the blatant lies he told during July's Big Ten Media Days were unintentional and the possible result of medication that might've affected his memory. This conclusion was almost as shameful as the report's list of Zach Smith's misdeeds while working for Meyer, including "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."
Ohio State Board of Trustees
Ohio State's Urban Meyer probe was about managing a crisis, not reaching a moral conclusion.
How does Meyer not get fired for that list alone?
How? By understanding that winning conference and national championships is more important in his business than anything else, that's how. In a telling message cited in Ohio State's summary, Meyer reminded his staff after Smith's firing that the team and the players must come first. "Zero conversation about Zach's past issues. We need to help him as he moves frwd. Team and players!!"
We need to help him, not her. Team and players first. Buckeye Nation above all.
This is the reality of major college football, and of major college sports, where unworthy athletic cultures are preserved at all costs. It's going to be tempting for future administrations dealing with future scandals on other campuses to follow the Ohio State script, cook up a ridiculous investigation, and reach for a reason, any reason, to hang on to a winning coach.
But university presidents from coast to coast should understand that Ohio State has been severely diminished here, along with Meyer, who can never again be taken seriously on anything. The school's overriding message to its world-famous football coach was pretty simple: Just keep beating Michigan. And right-minded observers everywhere scoffed at the absurdity of it all.
In the end, the people running Ohio State just made fools of themselves. Was the pain really worth the gain?
University presidents: Don't follow Ohio State's lead, or else
By Ian O'Connor
If you listen closely enough, you can hear college administrators across America flipping through this new Ohio State playbook that just arrived in the mail:
Place highly successful but besieged football coach on paid leave.
Hire important-sounding people with supposedly unimpeachable integrity to investigate him.
Call their probe independent every day and twice on Sunday.
And then wait for said probe to run a dizzying series of end-arounds on the truth to save poor Supercoach's job.
Only here's a message for those administrators who think Ohio State just set a wonderful precedent for the next Touchdown Tech forced by public disclosures to put its most visible representative on trial: Don't do it. Don't sell your university's soul for the sake of a few extra glorious Saturdays in the fall. Don't reduce your fine institution to a practical joke by taking a futile stab at crisis management, and by keeping the coach who protected his staff and program at a significant human cost.
Urban Meyer
OSU's investigation was about putting Urban Meyer back on the field and pursuing titles.
The nation isn't laughing with Buckeye Nation, but at Buckeye Nation. Or at least at the university officials who decided that Meyer deserved a mere three-game suspension for allowing wide receivers coach Zach Smith, an alleged repeat domestic abuser and confirmed serial screw-up, to remain on his staff for as long as he did.
Remember, it didn't take long for Meyer to show his employers that they had settled on a pathetically inadequate penalty. In the immediate wake of the announcement, Meyer read his initial statement of regret with all the emotion of someone reading a grocery list. He was asked in a news conference if he had a message for Courtney Smith, the woman who first accused her then-husband Zach of abuse while she was pregnant and Zach was an assistant under Meyer at Florida in 2009. The Ohio State coach didn't even have the decency to speak her name while spreading his message "to everyone involved" that he is "sorry that we're in this situation."
Rarely does a public figure so clearly declare exactly who he is and what he stands for, or doesn't stand for.
Deep down, Meyer had to know he deserved to be fired. He had to know that a mediocre coach with a mediocre record wouldn't have lasted long enough for Oho State to run an independent investigation that could never truly be independent, and could never truly return a recommendation and/or verdict independent of Meyer's 6-0 record against Michigan.
He escaped for the obvious reasons. Before the Big Ten season got underway, THE Ohio State University diagrammed THE most predictable play call of the year by sparing Meyer's job and enabling him as much as he had enabled his wide receivers coach, whose workplace conduct would've gotten him kicked out of most frat houses around the country, never mind the offices of a state institution. So Meyer exercised his restored clout at his presser when pressed about Courtney Smith, and apologized to his face-painted base about a "situation" that distracted "everyone involved" from the central mission of winning football games.
The major college sports machine churns on, stopping for nothing and nobody in its path. Just another sad and disturbing development at another big-time school with a moral compass gone awry in pursuit of victory and the desired revenue streams attached. You need a scorecard to keep track of this scandal and that one. If it isn't federal agents chasing the money men buying talent in college basketball, it's a Maryland administration trying to explain how an overheated football player could die on the watch of the alleged educators hired to coach him.
Once upon a time, Urban Meyer ran a football program at Florida defined by dominance on the field and so much noise away from it. The New York Times reported that Meyer's players were arrested at least 31 times between 2005 and 2010. Aaron Hernandez had caused Meyer so much trouble in Gainesville that the coach told one NFL team that it would be unwise to draft him. "Don't f- - -ing touch that guy," was the way the Florida coach put it. Meyer told the NFL team Hernandez was too big of a character risk to employ despite the fact that Meyer himself had benched the tight end for a grand total of one game out of 40 at Florida.
While working for ESPN in between coaching jobs, Meyer told one former NFL executive and media analyst that he was "tired of dealing with the police all the time" and that he yearned to "coach good kids." But in Meyer's world, the kids weren't a bigger problem than the man recruiting them.
Zach Smith
Zach Smith's pattern of troubling behavior was overlooked by Urban Meyer and OSU.
Ohio State's elders knew what they were getting when they hired Meyer in 2011 -- a national championship coach, one of the best of his generation at identifying and developing talent. But they also knew they were getting a head coach who ran a reckless program, and who didn't live by the codes of honor he talked about, wrote about, and posted in capital letters on team facility walls. This was a man, after all, who needed to sign a contract with his wife and children promising that he wouldn't again get swallowed whole by the monster that is elite D-I sports.
So in keeping Meyer, Ohio State covered for Ohio State and tried and failed to wish away the work done by an enterprising journalist, Brett McMurphy, who published damning texts and photos. In fact, to read the university's own 23-page summary of its findings is to read a clear-cut case for the coach's termination.
Investigators did not believe Urban Meyer's claim that Courtney Smith met with him (along with her husband) in 2009, and did not believe Meyer's claim that Smith recanted her allegation at the time. Investigators also did not believe Meyer's claim that he had no communication with his wife, Shelley, about the 2015 texts and photos Courtney shared with Shelley in discussing another alleged assault by the assistant coach.
Investigators also determined that Meyer had discussed with a staffer adjusting the settings on his phone to delete texts that were more than a year old (his examined phone turned up no messages older than a year), a reaction they concluded often "evidence consciousness of guilt." Investigators said they were concerned and troubled by many of Meyer's actions, or inactions, in this case, and their summary makes it clear to a right-minded reader that Meyer violated contract language calling for termination for bringing the university "into public disrepute, embarrassment, contempt, scandal or ridicule or failure by Coach to conform Coach's personal conduct to conventional and contemporary standards of good citizenship..."
But as the investigation closed, the home team's assigned judge and jury excused and rationalized Meyer's behavior at every turn, even suggesting that the blatant lies he told during July's Big Ten Media Days were unintentional and the possible result of medication that might've affected his memory. This conclusion was almost as shameful as the report's list of Zach Smith's misdeeds while working for Meyer, including "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."
Ohio State Board of Trustees
Ohio State's Urban Meyer probe was about managing a crisis, not reaching a moral conclusion.
How does Meyer not get fired for that list alone?
How? By understanding that winning conference and national championships is more important in his business than anything else, that's how. In a telling message cited in Ohio State's summary, Meyer reminded his staff after Smith's firing that the team and the players must come first. "Zero conversation about Zach's past issues. We need to help him as he moves frwd. Team and players!!"
We need to help him, not her. Team and players first. Buckeye Nation above all.
This is the reality of major college football, and of major college sports, where unworthy athletic cultures are preserved at all costs. It's going to be tempting for future administrations dealing with future scandals on other campuses to follow the Ohio State script, cook up a ridiculous investigation, and reach for a reason, any reason, to hang on to a winning coach.
But university presidents from coast to coast should understand that Ohio State has been severely diminished here, along with Meyer, who can never again be taken seriously on anything. The school's overriding message to its world-famous football coach was pretty simple: Just keep beating Michigan. And right-minded observers everywhere scoffed at the absurdity of it all.
In the end, the people running Ohio State just made fools of themselves. Was the pain really worth the gain?
- Jun 19, 2014
- 21,436
- 47,959
Founding Member
Ocalaman
Well-Known Member
- Mar 7, 2018
- 756
- 1,029
A legal analysis from Sports Illustrated:
Legal reasons why Ohio State didn't fire Urban Meyer
Legal reasons why Ohio State didn't fire Urban Meyer
- Sep 21, 2016
- 630
- 16
Nothing is ever truly deleted from a phone. The metadata stays on the phone until you do a complete bit clearing, and then it just looks really f'n fishy as to why the football HC needs that type of software, and equipment. If the admin truly wanted to see the deleted text messages, there are companies out there that specialize in this type of data restore.
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16,324
- 14,771
Founding Member
it's probably a university owned phone, if they wanted to know they could just get their legal team to file the proper paperwork to pull if from the phone companies servers.
Ocalaman
Well-Known Member
- Mar 7, 2018
- 756
- 1,029
Agree, but I don't think the OSU admin. really wants to know. They don't want to dig any further and have hunkered down hoping this will all blow over in a couple of weeks.
- Sep 21, 2016
- 630
- 16
You can only pull messages/emails through a federal court order, and then you have to show cause as to why, like a serious crime was being committed, was committed, or going to be committed. This is why its rarely done in divorce proceedings, etc. It takes something serious, like a terrorist threat, someone missing or killed, to pull these from the service provider,
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16,324
- 14,771
Founding Member
that's my point Ocalaman... the school wanted enough information to keep him on.... not enough to put them in a bad situation.
- Jun 12, 2014
- 16,324
- 14,771
Founding Member
It doesn't take anything that serious. it does take a court order, but I was able to get it from a Pinellas county court house when we needed it. You are really over dramatizing it.
- Jun 24, 2014
- 4,015
- 10,213
Founding Member
Exactly the reason why hell be gone by 2020.....no mother in the country is going to allow him into their house not too mention every coach bringing this up for the next few years when someone mentions OSU as an option
- Sep 21, 2016
- 630
- 16
Well I know for a fact that you need a federal court order to pull deleted email/messages from an account without the users permission. Yes you can file a normal subpoena with your local magistrate, but you need the other parties written consent to pull these. If they don't sign that subpoena you cant pull them, no?
