November 13th, 2018 at 11:41 AM ^
I don't hate watching Zach Smith squirm because he is the human equivalent of the odor that wafts out of a chock-full dumpster. But I don't think this story really passes muster. Whatever happened, it's probably less than what LeBron Grimes accuses him of and more than what OSU and Meyer/Smith are copping to. I don't really trust any of the main players in it.
November 13th, 2018 at 11:46 AM ^
its been said here that smith will continue to spiral down and start spilling beans on meyer... well, meyer is gone and to that extent maybe he piles on the narrative, but if he were to threaten the osu program and its jewels, such as bagmen,etc, then he will conveniently end up dead... cover story will be something akin to he was drunk on a speeding stop and lunged for weapon was shot by a state trooper.....
November 13th, 2018 at 1:30 PM ^
Dude... what
November 13th, 2018 at 1:22 PM ^
In the name of loooovvveeee! Before you break my heart.... :)
November 13th, 2018 at 11:52 AM ^
I view this as bad for Michigan. I fear that it may bring together OSU's players, who have been playing poorly as of late, versus how they played together right after the August Zach Smith scandal.
November 13th, 2018 at 11:53 AM ^
Because nothing brings people together like racism.
November 13th, 2018 at 11:58 AM ^
The Zach Smith may be a wife beating racist, but he's our wife beating racist Revenge Tour
November 13th, 2018 at 12:45 PM ^
Just ask MSU.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:08 PM ^
Is that really a saying? If so, I can understand why I haven’t heard it before. Does it really bring people together...wait, wait there are some pretty despicable people out there...
November 13th, 2018 at 12:00 PM ^
When did Ohio State look great? It gave up 31 to a terrible Oregon State squad and struggled with what's turned out to be a bad TCU team. Without James Franklin James Franklining, this is already a 2-loss team.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:10 PM ^
Thankfully this won't make OSU's players more talented.
November 13th, 2018 at 11:57 AM ^
As others have stated, Smith is walking excrement, but this piece should not have ever seen the light of day. There's just not enough there for the leaps McMurphy makes, and it's pretty scummy to throw your sources under the bus to cover your own ass.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:05 PM ^
I would like to just flush this whole cesspool of articles and twitter rants and drunken texting and racially charged stories down the toilet..........but I can't...........it's all so delicious........I'm stuck reading all these things. I.cant.pull.away.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:06 PM ^
I guess everything is based on perspective. The most important takeaway I got was that Grimes' mother has stage IV cancer. I hate cancer more than Urban or Zach Smith.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:06 PM ^
I think McMurphy is over the line on this, particularly at the end of the story. He seems to be implying that the mother exaggerated her cancer to get a waiver from the NCAA on the transfer. You need way stronger evidence then what he has here to make that implication. I realize that he did not come out and say it but the stuff on survival rates for that type of cancer is not needed.
I don’t think this story warrants trashing this kid’s family. The kid is just a college football player who transferred schools because he did not get along with a coach (a known jerk) or because he wanted to be near his sick mom. Dragging the whole family through the mud because he wants to get Urban Meyer is not justified.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:07 PM ^
This has nothing to do with the story, but Trevon Grimes is the one who was trying to start a fight with Jourdan Lewis when he was a counselor at The Opening. Ambry Thomas stepped in and told Grimes that he would have to go through him if he wanted to fight JD.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:12 PM ^
Think McMurphy may be stumbling on this one--if the denial from the mom and players who said they were there are true. Looks like an unfortunate miss, because organizations under threat will make a huge deal about how accusers go wrong and use it to bury the rest.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
I don't claim to know the mother, but when it comes to the Buckeye players all I will say is consider the source. They could be trying to save their coach. At the end of the day, they're still buckeyes
Where there's smoke, there's fire......and Urbz is most likely behind both
November 13th, 2018 at 12:13 PM ^
Ok Guys......Fun is over.....The story is now being refuted by THE current buckeye roster on twitter.
However will McMurphy survive this!?!
/s
November 13th, 2018 at 1:15 PM ^
So you are saying that the players are defending their coach and school, nobody would ever, ever defend their mentor or their alma matter for doing something wrong...wait, what, I am being told this has happened before. MSU, OSU, PSU, UM, Maryland, IU, Rutgers.... I am now being told this happens all the time.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:39 PM ^
And why does their denial merit more belief than the principals involved? Other than bystanders to an allegation, they don't know squat, either. And everyone else at the university is on the defensive Why?
That's the question this story raises about this whole incident. Why did Grimes want to immediately leave the university after whatever happened and why did the school which was paying him a scholarship, why did they send a plane to Florida with coaches and his roommate and then, allow him to transfer, instead of returning with them? Why?
Something happened to provoke such a reaction, and denial doesn't cover it. Grimes father greenlighted this story, McMurphy didn't go searching for it. It segues into what he was earlier reporting and it bridges all the folks involved in the prior case about Meyer, and it involves unfulfilled public records requests.
You are missing the overall, here. The story is about a university protecting its own interests whatever they are. And we don't know, because we don't have all the details, because they won't offer them in response to the questions McMurphy is asking. A journalist sets out to tell a story with facts, and sometimes his story leads to immediate answers, and sometimes it just raises more questions. Like this one does.
November 13th, 2018 at 2:20 PM ^
I think you are reading way too much into this.
Every rational piece of evidence suggests the racial slur did not occur, and it was just a blow up at practice. I was a collegiate athlete who had a coach who didn’t yell very much. But he had a few blowups in my 4 years, directed at athletes who were not putting in the proper effort. The athletes didn’t take too kindly to it, but there was truth in coach’s blow up.
I wasn’t a football player and I am betting their blow ups are a little more extreme, but that’s what this all sounded like. And believe me, when large groups of 18-23 year old guys have an issue with a coach, they voice their concerns or take action. This idea that these kids will just blindly defend coaches if the coaches are screaming the N word at black players is absurd. If you believe that, then I really don’t know what to say to you.
November 13th, 2018 at 7:52 PM ^
What makes you think the slur didn't happen? Zach Smith doesn't really deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point, but the current players would be defending Meyer and the program in general.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:50 PM ^
Ehh whatever. This is just more of the same from what we heard back in July/August. Not going to change anything unless McMurphy drops a real bomb shell with real substance. These are basically recycled stories. They may be different in content, but the overall substance is the same. We're not learning anything about Meyer with this stuff that people haven't already known about him for the last 10-12 years.
You want OSU to really feel pain and misery? Beat them in 11 days. That's when the whole state of Ohio would collapse on itself.
November 13th, 2018 at 12:52 PM ^
I don't know how I feel about this. While I have zero doubt that Smith is a complete piece of shit human being, I doubt a room full of football players would just stand by and not say anything about their coach hollering out racist terms
November 13th, 2018 at 1:00 PM ^
OSU players denying this doesn't really move the needle for me. They still don't believe anything McMurphy said about Urban Meyer this summer. They don't think Urban would tolerate that? Did they not read anything this summer?
That isn't to say he said a racial slur. He could have said it under his breath so that only Grimes heard him. Or he could have said something that sounded similar to a slur but wasn't. Or it was just an altercation and no slur was said. Or the kid told his dad that Smith said a slur as an excuse to leave and now that it's getting attention, he's not repeating that story.
Either way, I think its an indictment on Meyer (and Smith obviously) that this story is believable. If Meyer had a history of being an upstanding person, most would not believe this. Just like how few OSU or MSU fans would believe a story about JB and recruiting violations.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:09 PM ^
Dude. Cmon. Go read the FULL story, including the last couple paragraphs, read all the players responses that were there, then come to a rational conclusion. Don’t go off emotion
November 13th, 2018 at 6:17 PM ^
I’m not going off emotion. I’m saying that OSU players defending OSU doesn’t really mean anything to me. People within institutions often protect institutions. That’s not uncommon. I never said I believed the story either.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:12 PM ^
FWIW, Trevon Grimes's has been liking all the other players' tweets about it not being true.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:07 PM ^
Guys, let’s not be blind fans. Literally every player there says it didn’t happen, and Grimes also appears to claim it didn’t happen by liking all the tweets about it not happening.
This is not a real story and Brett will probably lose his job because this is a fake story.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:09 PM ^
This is an odd hill for McMurphy to set up camp on...
LeBron Grimes, the father of Trevon Grimes who was Brett McMurphy's main source for this morning's story, just took to Facebook and just opened up a whole other side to this thing. pic.twitter.com/jIyY2iMPf4
— James Grega Jr. (@JGrega11) November 13, 2018
tl;dr - McMurphy's main source Papa Grimes is claiming that his ex-wife, Mama Grimes is exaggerating the severity of her Stage IV cancer to secure Trevon Grimes's transfer.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:20 PM ^
What, now someone is saying that a parent would lie to benefit their child, Poppycock. Parents don’t do that, wait, what, I am now being told that parents do that, frequently.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:40 PM ^
"Exaggerating the severity"??, if he thinks she's lying about having cancer, then say that, but if she has cancer, then it's severely severe. ...I don't trust the father's story or McMurphy's reporting on it at all.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:17 PM ^
The story gets more and more insane.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:25 PM ^
Trevon seems to agree that it never happened. This was a garbage hit piece, nothing more, nothing less
November 13th, 2018 at 1:48 PM ^
I hope mcmurphy and other press bury Meyer with questions about the scandals of the program during Michigan week.
November 13th, 2018 at 1:57 PM ^
Did Zach attack the kid with his strap on?
November 13th, 2018 at 2:00 PM ^
“He curses and uses profanity, but he never took it to that level with me. He knew his boundaries.”
This is where you push aside the notebook and pen and just look across the table at the deposed, pause for a while to let it sink in, and once they become extremely uncomfortable, you ask with a bit of threat through your explicit enunciation:
"Are you saying that given all you know about Smith, that he was very good with respecting boundaries?"
November 13th, 2018 at 2:02 PM ^
Zach Smith and Grimes did have a "blow up" (or, a coach yelled at player). Smith was riding him hard. But I think it's entirely clear he never used racist language. Apparently, Smith thought Grimes wasn't playing hard enough. After the blow up he was left off the travel squad for the Rutgers game. He flew back to Florida that weekend. OSU flew down to try to convince him to come back. To no avail.
His mother's cancer was a concern, but that's not what drove his decision. Once the decision was made to transfer it was up to Grimes to convince the NCAA the he shouldn't sit out a year.
Ohio State never officially said anything about why he left the team, but it was widely known.
November 13th, 2018 at 2:18 PM ^
Any idea why McMurphy is trying so hard to get Meyer fired? Did Urban fuck his wife or something?
November 13th, 2018 at 2:33 PM ^
I think the end game of journalism now is to get people fired or to make people blackballed in their profession.
It didn’t work the first time with Meyer with pretty solid journalism, so now he’s resorting to reporting on rumors. The irony is that Brett will probably be the one without a job and have difficulty finding one after this piece
November 13th, 2018 at 3:16 PM ^
There is clearly something to the story but the messenger sucks. McMurphy has grown fully unhinged at this point and appears to just be badgering everyone in his unwavering quest for whatever.
FWIW, the OSU fans I know have essentially soured on Urban at this point so I wouldn't be surprised if he is no longer there in a year.
November 13th, 2018 at 3:29 PM ^
McMurphy is getting blasted for this now. Hard to imagine why he even printed this. When your best source is the estranged sketchy father, I don't think I'd rely on him to make some serious accusations. Maybe you go to print with this if you heard it straight from the horse's mouth (Trevon Grimes)...
Best case is this gets retracted, worst case is McMurphy gets sued...as it appears OSU is already gearing up for legal action.
November 13th, 2018 at 10:55 PM ^
I’ll eat a lemon if Ohio state sues.