COLUMBUS, Ohio – Speaking for 55 minutes in his first news conference since returning from a three-game suspension, Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer offered multiple apologies and expressed considerable regret about how he handled fired assistant coach Zach Smith.
“Once domestic violence was taken out of the equation, my mindset was how can we help stabilize this situation, the man has an obligation to raise those kids, to support that family. How can I help?,” Meyer said. “We made a decision and for many people out there it was the wrong decision. I look back now with all of the information we gathered, it was the wrong decision. But with what we knew at the time, I thought it was the right decision.”
What he didn’t do is say he believed Smith’s wife, Courtney, was the victim of domestic violence.
Meyer said he can only go on what he was told by law enforcement and that was “this was not domestic violence.” He said he was told that it was a “messy divorce with child custody issues.”
Smith was eventually fired because he wasn’t forthright about a trespassing allegation and a protection order filed against him.
Regarding whether he deleted text messages on his phone before the Ohio State-sanctioned review of Meyer’s handing of the Smith matter, Meyer said investigators informed him his setting were set to delete at one year. “I wasn’t sure what that meant,” he said.
He said that he determined that the school’s tech department had actually adjusted his setting because he complained his phone was short on storage space because he had a considerable number of recruiting videos, family photos, and texts from recruiting conversations. But Meyer said that event happened “months earlier.”
He apologized to the media to his statements at Big Ten media day when he was asked about whether Smith had been accused of domestic violence in 2015.
He was reacting to questions that he had received the not before regarding whether charged had been filed against Smith. He had spent considerable time determining the night before.
“I didn’t listen closely to the questions,” he said.
Meyer said he is concerned that he didn’t know of all accusations of in appropriate behavior against Smith. He said he has looking at ways to make sure staff members feel comfortable coming to him to report what they know.
“But I am not aware of one person who was aware of (those),” Meyer said.