“THE” Ohio State University’s athletic department is mired in turmoil: Urban Meyer and Jim Jordan have dementia, credibility issues

… domestic abuse and sexual abuse enablers

The details that are revealed through text messages and interviews are gripping: A young, pregnant woman was battered about by an assistant football coach at the University of Florida in 2009. He was arrested, but the head coach’s friends convinced the wife to drop the charges.

Then this assistant coach was hired at Ohio State a few years later, and he followed a familiar pattern. He battered his wife with his child clinging to her in 2015. She divorced him, but the records that reveal the abuse are sealed by a judge in Ohio — who was probably more worried about Ohio State’s chances for a national title than for the safety and welfare of women.

More than a decade earlier, a sleazy Ohio State team physician abused more than 70 athletes during his decades at the university, but no one did anything about it. Now, former wrestlers and others are suing the university because of the abuse, and a former assistant wrestling coach, whom they say knew well about the abuse and did nothing, is denying that it ever occurred.

In both cases, text messages are working against the coach and former coach, revealing cover-ups, or attempted cover-ups, by those in power. Things became so intense for OSU that the school suspended head football coach Urban Meyer with pay yesterday after a former ESPN reporter broke open a case that he has been pursuing for months. First, Ohio State fans are very concerned about the Urban Meyer situation. However, most probably do not know who Jim Jordan is. Second, explaining this will take some time.

Assistant Coach Zach Smith

Urban Meyer has been a very successful college football coach, etching himself a legacy that ranks up there with the best of them: Knute Rockne, Bud Wilkinson, Bear Bryant, Tom Osborne … better than all active coaches other than Nick Saban.

Meyer won two national championships at Florida in three seasons, and then mysteriously left. The Gators' program has not been the same since. One of his assistant coaches was named Zach Smith, who is apparently an outstanding wide receivers coach. The story about Smith is key to understanding why Meyer was suspended yesterday.

The story was originally broken by a former ESPN reporter who was laid off last year along with a slew of other personnel. Brett McMurphy broke the stories on Facebook since he is still being paid by ESPN and cannot take another job for a time. On July 24, McMurphy wrote this, “Former Ohio State wide receivers coach Zach Smith, who was fired Monday, was investigated on domestic violence and felonious assault allegations on Oct. 26, 2015 and also menacing by stalking on Nov. 9, 2015, the Powell (Ohio) Police Department disclosed on Tuesday.” That led to the firing of Smith by Meyer.

However, Meyer denied at the Big Ten Media Days this summer knowing anything about the abuse by Smith. “2015? I got a text late last night (about a report) something happened in 2015,” Meyer said in his best Richard Nixon “I am not a crook” imitation. “And there was nothing. Once again, there's nothing – once again, I don't know who creates a story like that.”

Sounds like an allegation of Fake News that we are hearing so much of lately during another scandal. Except that with this story, text messages and the victim tell a harrowing story.

The 2015 incident

This is the lead to the story that McMurphy wrote yesterday.

“COLUMBUS, Ohio – Text messages I have obtained, an exclusive interview with the victim and other information I have learned shows Ohio State coach Urban Meyer knew in 2015 of domestic abuse allegations against a member of his coaching staff. Courtney Smith, ex-wife of fired Ohio State assistant coach Zach Smith, provided text messages between her and the wives of Ohio State coaches – including Urban Meyer’s wife, Shelley – showing Meyer’s knowledge of the situation.”

Meyer ultimately fired Smith in July after McMurphy broke the information about the abuse charges that were investigated by the Powell Police Department in 2015, ones that eventually led to the divorce of Courtney and Zach Smith. However, as ESPN’s Andrea Adelson wrote today, “Urban Meyer today is the same Urban Meyer who walked the sideline at Florida: a head coach so driven to win, he was willing to tolerate misconduct among players and alleged misconduct among assistants as long as it meant competing for championships.

“But there is one big difference. Forgiving and forgetting domestic violence, sexual assault or abuse against women is no longer the norm. Nobody is too big to go down in college sports, not anymore. Not after what happened with Art Briles and Baylor or what happened for decades to Michigan State gymnasts or what is happening now at Ohio State.”

So, why would Meyer hire a domestic abuser to be his assistant coach for the Buckeyes? According to McMurphy, “Zach Smith has already coached with me for five seasons and so I know what a quality coach he is. He knows my system inside and out and he teaches the system the way I want it to be taught,” Meyer said on Dec. 22, 2011, when he hired him as wide receivers coach. And he brought his volatile temper with him to Columbus.

Assaulted wife with her child clinging to her

Here is what happened in the first 2015 incident, McMurphy reported. “On Oct. 25, 2015, Courtney and Zach were separated. Zach came by her house, an argument ensued and then Courtney said he assaulted her. ‘He took me and shoved me up against the wall, with his hands around my neck,’ Courtney said. ‘Something he did very often. My (then 3-year old) daughter was clinging to my leg. It obviously registered with him what he was doing, so he took my (then 5-year old) son and left. So I called the police’.”

Great guy! Assaults his wife while his daughter is “clinging” to her mother’s leg.

So, why didn’t Courtney report this to the police? It is a familiar refrain. She called 911, but then, “I hung up out of fear because I was scared Zach would lose his job,” she  told McMurphy. “He threw me down on the bathroom floor (in April of 2015) and screamed ‘look what you’ve turned me into.’ I don’t know what he was on. Another time, he took the top of a dip can and cut my hand. Everyone – all my family – said don’t call 911. If you do, he’ll get fired.”

That is typical for an abused spouse. Do not hurt him because it will eventually hurt you more than the abuse has.

Did not call in 2009, either

Zach Smith also had Ohio State ties prior to his being hired. His grandfather was a renowned coach for the Buckeyes, and when Smith first assaulted Courtney, he intervened on his grandson’s behalf. “A few days after Zach’s 2009 arrest, Courtney said two of Meyer’s closest friends – [former Shell Oil executive] Hiram de Fries and Earle Bruce – asked her to drop the charges. Bruce is Zach Smith’s grandfather, de Fries is Meyer’s ‘life coach.’ Bruce, who died in April, has a special place in Meyer’s heart. Bruce succeeded Woody Hayes at Ohio State from 1979-87, posting an 81-26-1 record in nine seasons. ’He is the strongest relationship I’ve ever had other than my father,’ Meyer said last week. ‘I’ve made that clear many, many times’.”

Smith’s family exerted pressure on Courtney to drop the charges in 2009, something she did, to her chagrin since the abuse continued for another six-plus years. “Bruce and Zach’s mother drove from Ohio to Gainesville to ask Courtney to drop the charges," Courtney said. "Courtney said she also received a call from de Fries to set up a meeting at Panera Bread on SW Archer Road in Gainesville,” McMurphy reported. Then she dropped the charges, but it did not matter. Her life of hell on earth continued for years and finally led her to file for a protection order from him, not the first one in her life.

Jim Jordan convinces head wrestling coach to have former wrestlers lie for him

Most Buckeye football fans just want Urban Meyer to return and lead OSU to another national title. And most have never heard of Jim Jordan and could care less about the wrestling program at Ohio State. Nevertheless, since the spring, the Columbus university has been roiled by a sexual abuse scandal that has led to an intense outside investigation. The focus of the abuse is a former team physician named Dr. Richard Strauss, who committed suicide in 2005 after retiring from Ohio State years earlier.

While the focus of the abuse investigation at the start was on the wrestling program, in which Jordan, now a U.S. congressman, was involved. The Strauss abuse investigation has evolved, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “In addition to wrestling, investigators have received reports regarding Strauss from former varsity athletes affiliated with cheerleading, fencing, football, gymnastics, ice hockey, swimming, and volleyball,” it reported in May.

Jordan accustations

At least seven former Ohio State wrestlers have accused Jordan of knowing about the abuse by Strauss. He denies it, and so has been enlisting his former head coach to help him find other coaches and wrestlers who will stand up for him. According to an NBC report yesterday, just before the Meyer suspension story broke, “Retired Ohio State wrestling coach Russ Hellickson reached out to two ex-team members and asked them to support their former assistant coach, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a day after they accused the powerful congressman of turning a blind eye to alleged sexual abuse by the team doctor, according to the wrestlers and text messages they shared with NBC News. The former wrestlers said their ex-coach made it clear to them he was under pressure from Jordan to get statements of support from members of the team.”

Talk about setting up Fake News. They are trying to get former wrestlers to lie about what they saw with the former doctor. However, the irony of this is that the former athletic director at Ohio State said that he had moved the wrestling team out of its physical location back in those years in the 1990s at the request of Hellickson because of problems not just with the physician, but with people who showered in that facility. It led one person to call OSU at the time “a cesspool of deviancy.”

Here is what Hellickson wrote to one of Jordan’s accusers in a text message on July 4, “I’m sorry you got caught up in the media train. If you think the story got told wrong about Jim, you could probably write a statement for release that tells your story and corrects what you feel bad about. I can put you in contact with someone who would release it.”

In essence, Jordan, who believes that this scandal will hurt his quest to become speaker of the house next year after Paul Ryan retires, is asking these athletes who have accused him of turning a blind eye toward Strauss’ abuse, is asking these wrestlers to cover up his sexual-abuse enabling from those years. That is actually called obstruction of justice if someone were to investigate it, but since Ohio State is already investigating, it may not matter.

Conclusion

THE Ohio State University is in big trouble athletics-wise. The Meyer situation is currently being investigated, and with the information that the texts and Courtney Smith has already revealed, he may not be coaching the Buckeyes any longer. As Andrea Adelson wrote today on ESPN, “Given the shift we have seen in our society, from Baylor to the #MeToo movement, Meyer was finally forced to listen. His past at Florida has come back to him in a rather unexpected way, all thanks to the decision he made almost a decade ago to give Zach Smith a second chance. In those 10 years, the world started to change. It seems Meyer hasn't changed quickly enough.”

For Jim Jordan, the story is amazing. He is asserting that the probe by former FBI director and decorated Vietnam veteran Robert Mueller is a witch hunt, that Russia never attacked us in 2016. That despite the unanimous opinion of all of the intelligence agencies that it did. So, he can see so clearly something that he knows nothing about, but cannot remember what happened in front of him in his eight years at Ohio State.

That is called hypocrisy, lying, or deceit — you pick the noun. What people should demand from him, as with Meyer, is honesty, something that neither Meyer nor Jordan use with any amount of frequency. They should both lose their jobs, but probably will not, though Meyer is on thin ice.

It is time for OSU to act with Meyer, and the people in Ohio to act next November regarding Jordan.