OSU WR coach Zach Smith repeated domestic violence arrests
So, an interesting timeline for this story. Last Wednesday OSU WR coach Zach Smith had a court date for breaking a protection order against his Ex-wife. All was quiet in the media until a random poster on 247 sports with zero posting history posted court documents on multiple team boards on the website asking why the local media wasn't reporting it. Several hours later, and caught with their pants down, a few local reports came out with quotes from Smith's lawyer saying he was more or less trapped trying to drop his kids off. LINK.
A lot more on the story broke today by former ESPN investigative reporter Brett McMurphy. Smith has had multiple arrests for domestic violence dating back to his time in Gainsville in 2009 and others while at OSU. Link.
So, this whole thing is kind of crazy. I have a hard time believing this was unknown to a lot of people. Also, if that random poster never posted the court docs in the first place it in all likelihood would have continued to be kept quiet, which is a tad troubling.
I was in agreement until your conclusion. I don't believe the Freep suffered from the fallout of their RR reported. A lot of us wish they had, but old grudges on a message board don't mean anything.
Local media weren't going out of their way to report transgressions before the Freep stories. If anything, the recognition the Freep got may have given a little push for some to follow suit.
The fruit is there. The internet-engaged portion of the fanbase (including me, I must say) turned against them completely. The story was rightly pilloried for inaccuracy, but was held to far higher standards than the fluff stuff they normally put out.
And nobody was prompted to follow suit. Look no further than the continuing scandals in the MSU athletic department to see that. The minute a publication gets a suggestion of overreaching, there's a huge pushback from the fans that happen to be a significant part of the customer base. There is no correlating increase in circulation from Michigan fans, so there is no benefit.
Major investigative reporting into this sort of thing in college-town areas (I will theorize that a couple of publications in the same city as major programs such as the LA Times are theoretically exempt from this) invariably comes from out of area. The Nassar story, for example, broke in the Indianapolis Star. Most of the tattoo-gate stuff required an ESPN reporter to uncover.
Reporters in Tuscaloosa all know which Dodge dealership is the source of the cars that many star Alabama football players drive. Nobody asks any questions. We all know why.
Not only does the guy have multiple domestic violence charges against him, but rumor has it Jim Jordan joked about it in the locker room, while holding a wrestler's balls.
I'm kind of confused about the whole OSU-would-love-to-see-this-guy-go trend in this thread. Maybe Columbus is such a great place guys just fall out of the sky. Still, I remember seeing Smith's name in 247's recruiter rankings. He was 13th in 2016, 4th in 2017 and 14th for 2018.
https://247sports.com/Season/2018-Football/CompositeCoachRankings
There is a good chuckle of their fanbase that want him gone because he can't actually coach. They either are not considering the impact on the recruiting trail or think OSU will recruit itself.
The interesting thing is, this may make it so he would be a crap recruitor as well. I just don't see how you can go into a home and impress too many mothers when they know you have a history of domestic violence. Right, now the talk from some in that fanbase is "well, he was never convicted". Like the fact that his wife dropping the charges change the fact that she called the cops on him for thowing her against a wall while pregnant.
Fire him, Urban.
Do it.
Like others, I have a very difficult time believing that this would be a complete shocker to Urban Meyer. I cannot imagine that at least some of this did not come up in any vetting process, assuming any was done, of course.
Hopefully, Meyer does what is presumably to him the optically correct - and really, correct in any sense - thing.
Urban knew. Owner of 11 warriors knew.
Jason PriestasSTAFF6 HOURS AGO
I'm going to clue you in on three facts:
1) Everything in our piece was first reported by Brett McMurphy earlier this morning. We mentioned that early on in the piece, linking to Brett's report.
2) We've known about the 2009 and 2015 incidents for a few years but did not feel comfortable running them because charges were dropped. It's a judgment call, but one we stuck to. It would have been easy to trot that out last week when a chunk of you were questioning our phrasing after he was cited for criminal trespass, but we didn't.
3) To talk to people at Ohio State in the football program, you have to go through the SID, Jerry Emig. We reached out to him before publishing and he declined to make a comment. We included that in our piece. After we published, he offered a new comment, and we also updated our story.
Bonus 4th fact! 2009 was nine years ago, not 15.
But sure, go ahead and keep slinging baseless accusations at us.
FWIW, folks on Eleven Warriors are now saying that this guy's attorney went on local radio & announced that all of the charges/allegations are going to be dropped.
Don't know if THAT'S true (attorney on the radio) or if so, whether what the attorney said on the radio interview is true, but there you have it.
It's like the mask slipped for a moment, then the OSU folks scrambled to put it back on & are hoping nobody will notice.
Looks like he’s gone
He is now fired per Twitter.
Mods or the OP probably should edit the title on the new news that he’s been shitcanned
He gone! AP just reported it 10 minutes ago.
Urban speaks tomorrow. Let's all have pizza! What do you say Urban? Jim's buying!
