Ohio State made good precautionary move putting Urban Meyer on leave

Ohio State made the right move putting Urban Meyer on leave while investigating what he knew about domestic violence allegations against Zach Smith.

News continues to break about former Ohio State receivers coach Zach Smith and his history of domestic violence allegations. Smith was eventually fired from the position by Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer, after he was issued a civil protection order by his ex-wife Courtney Smith.

As the evidence mounts against Smith, his ex-wife alleges that Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer knew of the abuse possibly before he even hired Smith at Ohio State. If you are unfamiliar with the specifics of the case, this timeline is also a great resource to get up to speed on the ongoing Smith saga.

Based on the evidence that is known and when that evidence came to light, Ohio State did the right thing by putting Meyer on administrative leave while the school investigates the case against its head football coach.

The relationship between Smith and Meyer is protracted in terms of the college football coaching carousel. Meyer was the head coach at Bowling Green when Smith joined the Falcons as a walk-on player. Later, Smith came to Gainesville as a graduate assistant and stayed on with Meyer’s Florida Gators staffs from 2005 through 2009.

After a few years of separation, Smith rejoined Meyer in Columbus in 2012 after the two-time national champion coach was hired to take over at Ohio State. Perhaps this is all just smoke. But sometimes smoke will help draw attention to a fire. And for Ohio State, the text is right there in Meyer’s 2015 contract extension stipulating his duties about reporting “any violations or potential violations known to Coach of Governing Athletic Rules or University Rules including, but not limited to, those by… the assistant coaches” to university authorities.

What might be the doomsday scenario for Meyer?

The first charges of domestic violence against Zach Smith came in 2009, when he was in Gainesville. At the time he was accused of throwing then-pregnant Courtney against a wall. Charges were brought against Smith, but his wife ultimately elected to drop the case and Smith remained on staff through the end of the season.

It is implausible that Meyer would have zero knowledge of this incident when he hired Smith. And Courtney has even alleged that longtime Meyer confidant Hiram DeFries helped convince Courtney Smith to drop the charges against her husband.

Further reporting by Bill Landis at Cleveland.com found a pattern of domestic violence incidents that continued to be reported to the authorities in Ohio after Smith joined the Buckeyes. Football teams are traditionally insular communities, closed off as much as possible to the outside world. The goal is always to protect the team and its members from that outside world, to protect the secrets within the walls.

This is usually a matter of trying to protect the playbook and the specifics of the training regimen. But the insularity extends beyond the practice facility. Student-athletes shunted off as much as possible from the general student community, with designated tutors and study facilities and predetermined course selections.

Accusations of cover-ups among Meyer’s players at Florida have already dogged the coach, charges he has steadfastly contested. Ohio State will need to find solid evidence that Meyer knew about the allegations and willfully chose to refrain from reporting them to the Office of Compliance Services at the university.

But if Courtney Smith’s claims prove true and Meyer was aware of the ongoing abuse, the university would have no choice. The bigger risk, though, is that they uncover a pattern that vindicates the allegations against Meyer from his Florida years and that casts a pall on his entire career.

Ohio State is doing the right thing in sidelining Meyer until they have determined how culpable the head coach is in enabling Smith’s abusive relationship. (And yes, while Smith was never convicted of a charge, the presence of repeated calls to the police indicates that this was indeed an abusive relationship.)

The university cannot take chances on further enabling a potential pattern of covering up abuses. Perhaps Meyer is ultimately exonerated and returns to the sidelines in Columbus. But this is hardly an onerous and overblown precaution to take by the school as it dives into the investigation further.