The story of last offseason has carried over into this year. The Zach Smith incident/debacle/horrorshow led to Urban Meyer being suspended for the first three games of the 2018 season and played no small part in leading Meyer to leave Ohio State at the conclusion of last season. Now, the release of a trove of documents related to the school’s internal investigation has cast a castigating eye on Meyer once more and another legendary coach is again under fire.
Ohio State releases more than 2,000 pages of texts, emails, performance reviews and contracts late Friday afternoon in response to requests about the university's investigation into Urban Meyer. In a new @SInow legal story I have 5 key takeaways: https://t.co/Tac4dZzCns pic.twitter.com/hztPuyhNqR
— Michael McCann (@McCannSportsLaw) August 3, 2019
As everyone has suspected, the records seem to imply that Meyer knew more than he let on. In the immediate fallout of Meyer firing Smith just before the start of the 2018 season, Meyer indicated that he had a limited knowledge of what had transpired. However, in the following weeks, it became clear that Meyer was aware of what had had happened and suspended him for the first three games of the season.
The text message from Meyer that some are claiming might be a smoking gun was sent when Smith was reportedly considering taking a job under Nick Saban at Alabama. Meyer texted:
“I have personally invested far too much in u to get u in position to take next step, U need to step away from other situation and let’s go win it all… again.”
In response to this revelation, the media asked Saban whether he had pursued Smith to be an assistant on his staff. Saban said:
“I really never did ever offer this guy a job. We did interview him. … When we did a background check we decided it was better to hire someone else.”
There is an ongoing debate over who initiated the interest between Smith and Saban, but the situation is as messy as everything else in this imbroglio. Smith has not been hired by any school since Ohio State fired him.
H/T Sports Illustrated and ESPN
