CLOSE SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports' Dan Wolken discusses why Ohio State football head coach Urban Meyer is under fire after reports surfaced he was in position to know about 2015 domestic violence allegation made against former assistant Zach Smith. USA TODAY
Urban Meyer knew much more about Zach Smith's history of domestic abuse allegations than he originally let on. (Photo: Patrick Gorski, USA TODAY Sports)
Football coach Urban Meyer was placed on administrative leave Wednesday by Ohio State, a stunning twist to his wildly successful tenure amid allegations he was aware of multiple instances of domestic abuse involving one of his former assistant coaches.
That assistant, former wide receivers coach Zach Smith, was accused of abuse by his ex-wife on several occasions, most recently in 2015. Meyer denied knowledge of that incident during an appearance at Big Ten Conference media days in July, though he said he was aware of a 2009 dispute between Smith and his ex-wife when he hired Smith in 2012.
"The University is conducting an investigation into these allegations," said a statement form the school. "During the inquiry, Urban Meyer will be on paid administrative leave. ... We are focused on supporting our players and on getting to the truth as expeditiously as possible."
Ryan Day, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, will serve as interim head coach during the investigation, the school said.
Meyer also released a statement: "Gene (Smith, the AD) and I agree that being on leave during this inquiry will facilitate its completion. This allows the team to conduct training camp with minimal distraction. I eagerly look forward to the resolution of this matter."
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In a taped appearance for the web site Stadium, Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney Smith, said she had told Meyer’s wife, Shelley, and Lindsey Voltolini, the wife of Ohio State’s director of football operations, about her ex-husband’s abusive behavior.
Among the correspondences between Smith and Shelley Meyer were photos showing bruises stemming from the 2015 incident.
At Big Ten media days, Meyer said members of the Ohio State staff had looked into the 2015 allegations, and that “there’s nothing.”
Meyer continued, “I don't know who creates a story like that."
Yet a text-message exchange between Smith and Voltolini obtained by former ESPN reporter Brett McMurphy implied that Meyer was aware of the allegations. “He (Urban) doesn’t know what to think,” reads one text message sent by Voltolini.
“I do believe he (Meyer) knew, but instead he chose to help the abuser and enable the abuser and believed whatever story Zach was telling everybody,” Smith said.
Across multiple stops, each more successful than the last, Meyer’s coaching career has been a contradiction of near-unparalleled success marred by bouts of controversy.
At Florida, where Meyer led the Gators to national championships in 2006 and 2008, his program dominated the Southeastern Conference yet too often found itself in the headlines for player misconduct. Off the field, a program that seemed invincible was anything but.
Thirty-one players were arrested during Meyer’s tenure, which spanned from 2005-10. A report by Sporting News detailed an altercation between Florida assistant coach Billy Gonzales and star receiver Percy Harvin, which saw Harvin grab Gonzales by the throat and tackle him to the ground before being separated by two assistants.
Another one of Meyer’s stars at Florida, tight Aaron Hernandez, was involved in two incidents during his time with the Gators, both in 2007. In one, Hernandez punched a restaurant employee in the side of the head, rupturing the individual’s eardrum. In the other, Hernandez was viewed as a person of interest in a shooting that occurred after a night at a local nightclub.
In 2013, Hernandez was arrested and charged in the murder of an acquaintance in North Attleborough, Mass. Hernandez was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2015.
On the field, on the other hand, Meyer led Florida back to prominence after a brief dip following the retirement of former head coach Steve Spurrier.
Led by quarterback Tim Tebow, the Gators won the national championship in both 2006 and 2008, finished No. 3 in the Amway Coaches Poll in 2009 and finished lower than 16th nationally just once, in Meyer’s final season in 2010.
Meyer nearly retired in the winter of 2009, after a health scare involving chest pains following the recent conference championship game and a desire to spend more time with his family. He officially stepped down on Dec. 9, 2010, and spent the 2011 season as an analyst for ESPN.
“At the end of the day, I'm very convinced that you're going to be judged on how you are as a husband and as a father and not on how many bowl games we won,” Meyer said at the time.
But it wasn’t long before he returned to coaching. A native of Ashtabula, Ohio, Meyer was hired by Ohio State in late November of 2011, and immediately moved the Buckeyes into elite company: OSU went 12-0 in his debut season, in 2012, though the Buckeyes were ineligible for the postseason due to sanctions stemming from the Jim Tressel era.
Of Meyer’s six teams, just one, in 2013, finished outside the top 10 of the Coaches Poll. The 2014 team claimed the inaugural College Football Playoff national championship. Each of the five Meyer-coached teams eligible for the postseason reached a New Year’s Six bowl; all six combined for just three losses in regular-season Big Ten play.
He always had a reputation for being difficult, addicted to the details, micromanaging every detail of his program, however small. At Ohio State, for instance, the desk in Meyer’s office was angled toward the door leading into the Buckeyes’ main football facility — allowing him to see who was going in and out, and when.
Yet you could never argue with the results. Meyer holds a career record of 177-31, which includes earlier, two-year stints at Bowling Green and Utah. His final team at Utah, in 2004, went 12-0 and won the Fiesta Bowl. In the history of the FBS, just three coaches have done better than Meyer’s 85.1 winning percentage.
He said his ESPN contract expires later this month, at which point he will join Stadium, a Chicago-based sports network. Later Wednesday, Stadium published an exclusive video interview with Courtney Smith.
“Shelley said she was going to have to tell Urban,” Smith said in the video. She also said that Shelley Meyer never confirmed to her that she had told her husband about the allegations. Meyer is a registered nurse employed by Ohio State’s College of Nursing, according to an Ohio State website.
The lawyers listed in a local court docket as having represented Zach Smith and Courtney Smith in the recent proceedings did not reply to requests for comment Wednesday. Last week, Zach Smith’s lawyer, Bradley Koffel, told The Columbus Dispatch that the recent trespassing charge stemmed from a misunderstanding related to where Smith was supposed to drop off their children as part of their custodial arrangement.
Smith has worked for Meyer since 2005, when he was a graduate assistant at Florida, and he played for Meyer before that, at Bowling Green. He is also a grandson of Earl Bruce, a former Ohio State coach whom Meyer has identified as a mentor.
The questions of who knew what, and when, about allegations of domestic abuse against an Ohio State athletics employee echo those raised in recent weeks about two other former university employees affiliated with athletics.
Last month, Ohio State announced that an independent investigation, which is still continuing, had uncovered more than 100 former students who said that Dr. Richard H. Strauss, a former university employee and team doctor, had sexually abused them. Three lawsuits have been filed by former athletes in several sports. They say that Strauss used his position as a university-designated medical professional to molest them and that several authority figures knew about it, including a former wrestling coach and a former athletic director. Both have denied that they knew about the Strauss abuse.
That scandal has ensnared Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the most powerful elected Republican politicians in the country, who was an assistant wrestling coach for several years while Strauss was the team doctor. Jordan has denied having had knowledge of the allegations, and he has argued that accusers have been put up to fabricating stories by an unspecified “deep state.”
Ohio State has placed coach Urban Meyer on paid administrative leave while it investigates claims that his wife knew about allegations of domestic violence against an assistant coach years before he was fired last week.
Courtney Smith gave an interview to Stadium and provided text messages to former ESPN reporter Brett McMurphy between her and Shelley Meyer in 2015 and with the wives of other Buckeyes coaches. Courtney Smith also provided threatening texts she said came from her ex-husband, former assistant Zach Smith.
“Shelley said she was going to have to tell Urban,” Courtney Smith told Stadium. “I said: ‘That’s fine, you should tell Urban.'”
Zach Smith was fired last week after an Ohio court granted a domestic violence protective order to Courtney Smith.
Hours after Courtney Smith’s interview was posted online Wednesday, Ohio State said it was conducting an investigation into the allegations and Meyer was being placed on leave. Offensive coordinator Ryan Day will serve as acting head coach for the Buckeyes, expected to be one of the top teams in the nation again this season.
Meyer said he and athletic director Gene Smith agree that being on leave during the inquiry was best for the investigation.
“This allows the team to conduct training camp with minimal distraction. I eagerly look forward to the resolution of this matter.” Meyer said in a statement.
Meyer is heading into his seventh season at Ohio State, where he is 73-8 with a national title in 2014 and two Big Ten Conference championships. Shelley Meyer is a registered nurse and is employed as an instructor at Ohio State. Both Meyer and his wife could be in violation of Title IX policy on reporting allegations of domestic violence against university employees.
Zach Smith was charged in May with misdemeanor criminal trespass. At the time of the charge, his attorney said Courtney Smith had accused him of driving to her apartment after she told him they would meet elsewhere so he could drop off their son. Zach Smith pleaded not guilty last month. A hearing has been scheduled for Friday.
Zach Smith was also accused of aggravated battery on his then-pregnant wife in 2009 while he was a graduate assistant on Meyer’s staff at Florida. The charge was dropped because of insufficient evidence. Urban Meyer brought Smith, the grandson of late Buckeyes coach Earle Bruce, to Ohio State in 2012.
Two police reports filed in 2015 in Ohio’s Powell County, after the Smiths separated in June of that year, accused Zach Smith of abuse. Charges were never filed.
At Big Ten media days, Meyer said he knew of the incident in 2009 and that he and Shelley Meyer addressed it with the Smiths. He was also asked about the 2015 incident alleged by Courtney Smith.
“I can’t say it didn’t happen because I wasn’t there,” he replied. “I was never told about anything and nothing ever came to light. I’ve never had a conversation about it. I know nothing about it. First I heard about that was last night. No, and I asked some people back at the office to call and say what happened and they came back and said they know nothing about it.”
The Smiths divorced in 2016.
