Summary of OSU Investigators' Findings Now Online

Thanks CLion. 

So, here is my bullet points:

1. Meyer does not remember and has memory issues (when it matters)

2. Deleted text once he felt it will come out.

3. Wife never says to Meyer when someone's life in jeopardy. 

4. Does not tell his supervisor when one of his employees has drug issue.

5. Lied to the media and it was an accident. 

6. Smith had performance issues but he went against the recommendation to replace him.

7. Loyalty to his mentor is important to him.

8. Title IX reporting was not addressed???

9. Staffer who was transferred not addressed?

That is what I got from the excerpts and reading the document (not thoroughly)

Meyer is a liar. His boss has no backbone. His wife is just accepting the insult. OSU has no backbone. Sickening. There are too many holes and I will not be surprised if something comes up.

Odds that he walks away after the season? 

Apparently Meyer deleted texts on his phone that were older than a year. This is turning into a train wreck.

https://twitter.com/danwolken/status/1032462868715905030?s=21

Holy shit!

When Meyer found out the media was onto his lies he wanted to know how to auto delete older text messages?!?!?

This entire report is damning of Meyer and the conclusions do not match the individual findings at all.

This is obviously an Onion article.  There are a half dozen smoking guns in here!

What on Earth????????

Osu is going to get fried in the media tomorrow.

Here's my executive summary...

The football world is losing their minds over this slap on the wrist. This story is about to go plaid.

So McMurphy can dig and find dirt, but OSU Trustees find nothing. Please people.... OSU should be ashamed of themselves and watching Meyer say that farce speech is all you need to know. 

This is weird but Ohio State investigated Ohio State and decided not to ruin Ohio State’s football program

— Faux Pelini (@FauxPelini) August 23, 2018

At this point I’m going to assume this statement from the report means they did find other illegal or illicit behavior, however because it was not in the scope of the original request it is being left out. 

“We set forth here our key factual findings. In doing so, we discuss information from witnesses, electronic and written documents and other sources that are relevant to our findings. We do not discuss all of the information obtained by the Independent Investigation, some of which was not relevant to our mandate and some of which was received with assurance of confidentiality. All information material to our findings, however, is discussed.”

This is weird but Ohio State investigated Ohio State and decided not to ruin Ohio State’s football program

— Faux Pelini (@FauxPelini) August 23, 2018

It's honestly hard for me to process how the events in the report should have been responded to. I live in a completely different paradigm--the moral behavior of people in my line of work is a fundamental qualification of doing it. I honestly don't understand why Zach Smith got so many "don't do this or you're fired" warnings that went unheeded, regardless of the allegations of abuse.

Strip clubs? Skipping out on recruiting visits (how have we always been out-recruited by these people)? Extramarital affairs that surely people are picking up on? 

And how do they believe the man who is involved in all of this mess over his wife when abuse is alleged? How does Urban not bring up the initial allegations from 2009 (Smith's known behavior, even if he was somehow not guilty of abuse, which I don't believe, is a MAJOR red flag to me) when Smith is hired?

Urban seems to have terrible judgment. The funny thing is, I believe he actually does have compassion in these situations, but he's blind and foolish. And that explanation for the media day deception is hot garbage. 

I do, at least, acknowledge that he suffers from serious memory loss. He forgot, for example, that he had Zeke Elliott on his team when they hosted Michigan State in 2015. I wish he'd forget stuff like that when they play us. 

So far Ohio State administrators have apologized three times to "Buckeye Nation" and zero times to Courtney Smith or her children.

— Dan Wetzel (@DanWetzel) August 23, 2018

So, I'm an employment lawyer, and I've seen plenty of these in my day.

I have to say, this is what I expected to be results of the investigation in terms of discipline, although I'm a bit surprised by some of the evidence (e.g., Meyer allegedly wiping his text history, the "misremembering" of an investigation he followed for months, etc.)

Frankly, in my opinion, this is the report you write when you're looking for a reason to keep someone and there isn't damning evidence that you cannot keep that person. This is a "we'll take some heat, but it's good enough report to justify a slap on the wrist" and I truly believe that. If there was something so bad, they may have had their hand forced, but given so much of this is arrests, phone records that were conveniently wiped, and attributed to "forgetting" it needed a damning piece of evidence that would be public.

The fact is when you're conducting an investigation there's always factual considerations (e.g., how much weight do you give the fact that Urban Meyer said he didn't believe the abuse allegations, etc.). Those are VERY easy to sway to fit your outcome. Here the outcome is Meyer stays on, so it's:

• "was deeply absorbed in football season"
• "The firing of Zach Smith the day before – the first time Coach Meyer had fired a coach – was also on his mind"
• "as was the erroneous media report of a felony arrest of Zach Smith in 2015" (by this own internal staff that referenced this)
• "sometimes had significant memory issues in other situations where he had prior extensive knowledge of events"
• "He evidenced the same minimalist approach"
• "may have been motivated, in part, by his loyalty to Earle Bruce, his mentor"
• "made misstatements – whether deliberately or not – about his knowledge of the events of 2015."
• "While we do not know if messages older than a year had been on Coach Meyer’s phone before August 1st or whether Coach Meyer deleted any messages"
• "we do not find that Coach Meyer’s misstatements on Big Ten Media Days were part of a deliberate cover-up"
• "although it is a close question and we cannot rule out that Coach Meyer was intentionally misleading in his answers, we do not ultimately find that he was. He clearly misspoke and made misstatements, but the reasons that happened are complex"

These are all the exact, extremely well massaged legal statements you make on the evidence you collect that allows you to come to a conclusion that you want.

If this is a low level employee that person is gone because you don't trust them. If it's Urban Meyer it's a 3-game suspension. That's how this works. 

It's sad, and he's a pretty disgusting human being who puts winning apparently above nearly everything, but I honestly cannot say I'm surprised at this point. This case needed a smoking gun and there simply wasn't one that couldn't be explained away by a high priced lawyer.

Every team on OSU’s schedule can send a message and forfeit their game against OSU.  Let OSU walk into the CFP because that’s all that matters to Buckeye Nation. 

How does one blatantly obstruct an investigation being conducted by their employer by erasing old text messages but keeps a job?

Three songs come to mind for next years psi home game. Beat it M.Jackson, Memories B. Streisand, Liar Three Dog Night. Play the Liar chords before every snap.

Three songs come to mind for next years osu home game. Beat it M.Jackson, Memories B. Streisand, Liar Three Dog Night. Play the Liar chords before every snap.

The craziest thing about all of this to me is that at least to start, osu handled this situation exactly like urban should have handled it in 2015 (let alone in 2009). He knew an active police investigation was going on and stood around waiting for it to conclude while doing nothing to the one being investigated. At least osu put urban on admin leave to investigate him. They may not know how to write a competent report, but they at least have the basics of 'person A is being investigated and therefore needs to be not a part of our program right now.' Urban seems to not understand that principle, yet they discovered that through their investigation and saw nothing wrong with it. Apparently handling a police investigation differently than osu handles an internal investigation is handling it correctly. Yeahok.gif

I have a feeling that their president, Michael Drake, wanted to can his ass to preserve the fledgling dignity of a university that so long had a win-at-all-costs mentality. The Board of Trustees (BOT) and coach Meyer fought even a suspension and instead of resigning before the parties settled on this HALF-ASSED suspension. Meyer and the BOT at osu actually think they can pull an Officer Barbrady here and sweep their willful negligence about Zach Smith's abusive, morally corrupt and appalling behavior under the rug. This is a man who, above all, BEAT HIS WIFE, and then proceeded to rack up bills sending sex toys to the office, filming himself having sex with a university secretary (subordinate), taking pictures of his dick while visiting the White House, going to strip clubs while on university business, doing illicit drugs - getting caught, sent to rehab, and skipping out on rehab- among other egregious behavior. Urban Meyer knew all of this and continued to employ this bastard. When the shit hit the fan, he denied knowledge of it - a claim that was so easily debunked. And he has the AUDACITY to fight even a suspension? He should be fired and the University should be sanctioned for title IX violations. 

It's fucking disgusting that people like this are allowed to thrive. They don't just grift from here to there scraping by on others' backs. They get multi-million dollar contracts. They lead generations of youth... They are heralded by fans.

Key Parts for me, any of which would result in me firing my employee:

- Meyer says that he met with both Zach Smith and Courtney Smith in 2009 and that they told him nothing really happened. Both Zach and Courtney told the investigation that they did not meet with him together. 

- He deletes his text messages going back farther than a year

- He does not inform OSU of Zach Smith's arrest in 2009

- He says "do it again and I'll fire you" about a million times. Never does despite further and further evidence that Zach Smith does not deserve to be employed in his position. And he had multiple contracts he didn't have to offer to Zach Smith. 

- He fired Zach Smith this year because of cumulative transgressions and not living up to the "Core Values" of Meyer's program (despite not firing him until after the media exposed Zach Smith's history, not before so there goes that reasoning). Yet, in previous employee evaluations, Meyer stated that Smith lived up to representing the Core Values. 

- Lied at media day. There's no such thing as an unintentional lie when you're asked the same question 9 times. He had plenty of opportunity to clarify what happened. 

- He knew of things that happened in 2015. Courtney Smith texted Shelley Meyer about Zach Smith's violent behavior and sent pics. Shelley Meyer said in the texts that she believed Courtney and Zach was scary. Shelley Meyer apparently does not share this information with her husband despite her knowing of the incident in 2015. This is obviously a coordinated lie between the two. 

Any of the above show he deserved to be fired. The investigation does not seem to press Meyer on any of the above. They accepted his excuses of focus on football and memory loss. The report loses all credibility when they say they were impressed with Meyer's commitment to women. How? How do you investigate all of the above, know that he knew everything he did about Zach Smith and come away impressed? It's truly disgusting. 

One of the most astounding things in this report that I cannot get past is the whole "Urban Meyer takes medication that at times causes him to forget the specifics of certain situations".  Urban has been pretty open that he deals with some intense anxiety issues, so there is a pretty good chance he is prescribed xanax/ativan or something similar to help deal with these issues. Anyone in the medical community or that has been prescribed something like this can tell you there is a certain amount of memory loss that CAN be associated with taking these medications...but its the type of memory loss where you forget about making those late night nachos until you wake up in the morning with heartburn. Certainly not memory loss that causes you to forget the specifics of covering for a staff member who has repeatedly been involved in domestic abuse, sexual relations with staff members, arrests with the local police departments, drug addiction and treatment etc. 

So you tell me, at what point in this "investigation" is Urban Meyer's "memory loss" even relevant, if not to just completely cloud the situation. He didn't intentionally lie? He forgot to bring up all of these relevant details to his employers because he "occasionally forgets specific details"?  

The lengths that people in power at OSU will go to cover their collective asses is dangerous and irresponsible beyond what is being reported. What does this say to women who try to come forward against men of power in the future? You will be verbally assaulted by the fan base, bashed on social media, death threats, and dragged by this enabling culture. 

This goes so far beyond a football rivalry. What is going down at OSU at the moment is just down right unforgivable.