OSU President Michael Drake: Investigation will be finished when it's finished

The 11 warrior comments are golden, I’d say 75% of the people are shitting their pants and don’t believe Urban will be their coach anymore. Shitty they’ll still be loaded with talent and a good staff to lead them. Plus they don’t fucking play anybody so that helps. Oregon State, Tulane, and TCU are all ass. They go to MSU and Penn state and that’s about all the competition they have until Michigan rolls into Columbus. 

The optimist in me hopes they are truly attempting to do a thorough investigation. The cynic wonders whether they saw the backlash from placing a 14 day definitive end date on the investigation and are attempting to mitigate takes that the investigation was a sham.

President Drake fired the OSU band director back in 2014.  That band director (Jon Waters) was fairly beloved by Buckeye folk.  But Drake showed him the door, despite Drake being in his new job for less than a month.

That decision - coming 24 days into the job - it was a strong move.  It was a "there's a new sheriff in town" type of move.

Meyer's infinitely more beloved than Waters, of course.  But I don't think Drake is a man who is afraid of the potential backlash involved w/ firing Meyer.  I don't think Drake is afraid of Meyer either.

There are plenty of other cases where a University President (Gordon Gee w/ Tressel, Spanier w/ Paterno, Edward Foote w/ Jimmy Johnson way back in the day) was afraid of their football coach, or afraid of backlash in censoring that coach.  So those Presidents generally kow-towed to the coach.  I don't think Drake is that type of University President.

I'll be completely shocked if he's let go. Izzo and Dantonio have more clearly done far worse things and they're not going anywhere.

 I think we all sincerely hope that Ohio State does the right thing here. Here is a hypothetical: they actually fire urban Meyer because they want to send a message as an institution that any semblance of affiliation with domestic violence is absolutely unacceptable. Then they hire a coach with a high level of integrity, and then they continue to beat us four straight years.  That scares me, because they would’ve taken the highroad and then still on us on the football field. Losing to Meyer is a terrible experience, but at least we have the morally superior institution.  Now if they keep him, and we manage to beat him in the good versus evil matchup this year, that would be a beautiful form of vigilante sports justice. 

One thing seems clear to me, Drake is going to make sure that the investigation is free of any criticism about the manner in which it was conducted. Whether or not Meyer gets the axe, he (Drake) is going to make damn sure nothing blows back on him. 

I think the interview was more about him driving this home than anything else. I don’t think Drake gives a shit which way it goes as long as his gig is safe, and he isn’t responsible for a 38 million dollar buyout. 

In other words - “It will be finished when we have good enough alibis for every question we think will be asked after we announce our own domestic violence enabler is not fired because we value wins more than anything.”

Drake knows that public/internet outrage over this sort of thing has a life span of about 2 weeks, after which time most people's attention will have moved on to something else. You can bet your left testicle they have people tracking how much Meyer gets mentioned on the internet, and will wait until things cool down sufficiently before they announce they're reinstating him.

I hope they include talking to the Powell PD, who is apparently good at looking the other way also.  Seems like Meyer will stay and Gene Smith will take the fall for him.  Not that it's much of a sacrifice given that Gene Smith is near retirement already and he would receive a big severance package.

The positive about Meyer staying would be reporters digging for other skeletons in the closet all year long.

he wants to uncover all the skeletons in the closet.  To make sure when he reinstates Urban he won't have any embarrassing stories from McMurphy dropping after the decision comes out.

Boy, Feels like they are worried about something. Maybe the fact they are just giving it time. Hoping people move on to something else.

I'd still be shocked if he's fired or resigns. This is more about having time to angle the right story for his return, or to negotiate Gene Smith's resignation. 

Gene Smith is replaceable. Meyer isn't. Not only does he win football games, but he is a HUGE cash cow for the university as a whole. Increased student applications, increased alum donations, new facilities (both academic and athletic). When I lived in Columbus a couple years ago (during their title run as well) there was new construction going on all over campus. Meyer is at least indirectly responsible for all of that. He's not the sole reason for it, but he's one of the main reasons at any rate. 

My guess is that Drake is also dragging it on this along to make sure the investigation is conducted in such a way to where, at least with the information currently known, none of this ever comes back on him as some sort of sham or botched investigation. He wants to be able to go through points A-Z and say "we did that" or "we investigated that." 

At the end of the day, I think the worst Meyer is yet to face is just going to be some hilarious college gameday signs, and some snarky comments from Paul Finebaum and Mark May. But he's coming back. Now if this was John Cooper we were talking about, there would've been no LOA. He would've been fired two weeks ago. 

To all those saying that they hope he's suspended longer so he's away from the team longer, I think the onion has a good article for you:

https://www.theonion.com/ohio-state-puts-urban-meyer-on-paid-secret-coaching-lea-1828059245

Gene Smith will be the fall guy

Urban will be their coach for TCU if not earlier

Well... Billable hours are in play. That doesn't mean a delay puts Meyer out the door, it means their firm wants to make the investigation look good, and get paid to boot. 

There will be, of course, those within the industry that argue that counselors are above reproach and an officer of the court would never act in their own personal interest (really? They get paid to justify things to their client). There's plenty of justification to draw it out, even if it's the wrong call for all involved.

All that said, I read this article and the quotes as justification for why the findings announcement is going to coincidentally occur this afternoon or evening, because it will finish when it's finished.

I really don't think this gives us much new information re: whether he stays or goes as it's pretty simple to craft a narrative in either direction. For instance - it's taking longer because they need time to fully negotiate a resignation/buyout combo and prep their publicity statement to minimize damage. On the other hand, they want to reinstate him and show that all the allegations were overblown, but need to collect all the evidence as 1) they can't have McMurphy lobbing unexpected bombs following the decision and 2) you better be damn sure that the allegations are unwarranted if you're essentially going to go against the victim in this case. I think the 14 days was ambitious and it makes sense that it will likely take longer than that - but I don't think you can read into a decision one way or the other on the basis of this information.

Word is Omarosa has tapes.  

MgrowoldPosted a personal story that sounds a lot like the Smiths situation. Has anyone read anything to suggest that there is evidence that the OSU Slappy version of this is actually true?  11 warriors is obviously very convinced that the woman is bat shit crazy. Most of the rest of the world is convinced that Zach Smith is an abuser. Can it be a little bit of both? I really just want this investigation to turn up the truth. The problem is, the truth is very hard to achieve in the situations. Will we ever really know for sure? Probably not.