College Football: The Tarnished Legacy of Urban Meyer

After a very quiet offseason for College Football, the sport was rocked by the investigation of Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer. The cliff notes version is that Meyer may or may not have known about former Wide Receivers coach Zach Smith was physically and emotionally abusing his wife Courtney Smith dating back to Meyer’s days has Head Coach at Florida.

Reports have shown that Courtney was texting other coaches wives including Meyer’s about the abuse and nothing was done by either university (Florida and Ohio State). A more detailed Version of the story can be found here. The list of college football coaches with multiple national championships is two: Meyer and Nick Saban. Saban is arguably the greatest college football coach of all-time and with continued success Meyer would have gone down as one of the greatest. This investigation will taint his legacy.

During the past five years college football unearthed child molestation crimes at Penn State, sexual assault crimes at Baylor University, and sexual abuse of female athletes at Michigan State ending in multiple arrests and house cleaning at all three universities. Legendary head coach Joe Paterno reputation of running a clean program was completely tarnished; the University fired him in 2011 removed a statue of Paterno outside of Happy Valley. At Baylor, the president, Athletic Director, Title 1X coordinator and head football coach were all fired or resigned due to allegations. Former head coach Art Briles will likely never coach at the collegiate level again. Michigan State gymnastics coach abruptly retired. The investigation was initially linked to the football and basketball programs as well.

Point is that the NCAA’s stance on covering up crimes is quite clear: Do not do it. Does not matter if your a football coaching legend (Joe Paterno) or an up and coming coach that has jump-started a historically bad program (Art Briles). Now I am not saying that Urban knew about Smith and did nothing, but how did you not act once an established pattern arose? In 2009 Smith was an intern that was charged with aggravated battery against his pregnant wife, why was he not fired then? letting go of an intern is much easier than firing your receivers coach nearly ten years later (after an established pattern of behavior). Urban, you are better than this. You just risked your entire career over giving a second chance to someone who belongs in jail.

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