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Peonage Ball and America

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Paul has covered the salient points about OSU’s decision to give a not-actually-even-3-game suspension Urban Meyer. But there’s something else about this sordid little tale that tells us a great deal about the USA in 2018:

The warning signs flared: delinquent payments for university travel expenses, a $600 night at a Florida strip club with at least one high school coach, a rash of missed meetings on recruiting trips for football players and late arrivals at practices. But Zach Smith, the Ohio State assistant coach at the center of it all, not only kept his job but got raises along the way.

Even before these episodes, described in a university report released Wednesday, he had been accused in 2009 of throwing his pregnant wife against a wall while an assistant at the University of Florida, though no charges were filed. At the time, like he did recently at Ohio State, Mr. Smith had a powerful benefactor looking after him: Urban Meyer, a living legend of a football coach whose mentor was Mr. Smith’s grandfather, Earle Bruce, another revered Ohio State coach.

[…]

Mr. Meyer said he had only a vague recollection of being aware of these issues, according to the report.

Mr. Smith was regularly late to practice and workouts in the 2016 season. Word reached Mr. Meyer that Mr. Smith had failed to appear at scheduled recruiting visits at various high schools, “despite reporting internally that he had.”

Mr. Smith told investigators that Mr. Meyer warned him that if he continued to be late and otherwise unreliable, he would be fired. In fact, Gene Smith suggested that Mr. Meyer do so.

Mr. Meyer did not.

[…]

Investigators found that Mr. Meyer had repeatedly given Mr. Smith the benefit of the doubt, a running theme in a report that found missteps on Mr. Meyer’s part related to his handling of the case but no unassailable evidence of a cover-up or that he “deliberately lied” about his knowledge of the case in his inconsistent public statements.

So, to review, an eminently replaceable position coach who got his job through nepotism is consistently given a pass by the head coach for an extensive array of bad behavior, even when failing to even minimally necessary parts of his job. (In case you’re wondering, it’s not like THE ohio state university has been churning out lots of quality NFL wideouts during Meyer’s tenure; Michael Thomas has been excellent, albeit with a “plays with one of the 10 best QBs in NFL history” grain of salt, and…that’s it. The only other WRs drafted in the first three rounds have been a bust and a Jets second rounder and therefore world-historical bust. I assume Smith is a cromulent enough position coach when he’s sober and can be bothered to show up to work but he’s not the Wade Phillips of receiver coaches or anything in the unlikely event such a thing is even possible.)

Wait, it gets better:

By June 2016 Mr. Meyer had directed Mr. Smith to check into a drug treatment facility for addiction to a stimulant prescription drug used to treat A.D.H.D.

The following February, Mr. Meyer recommended that Mr. Smith receive a nearly $74,000 raise to bring his salary to $300,000.

Meyer didn’t just keep this asshole around despite multiple credible domestic abuse charges and increasingly bad job performance, he gave a position coach with less than no bargaining leverage a high five figure raise! What a country.

This would be gross in any context, but is considerably worse given that the players literally putting their bodies on the line are not allowed to be compensated beyond scholarships, even by third parties. Indeed, Meyer has this job because of a particularly piddlyshit only-in-the-NCAA “corruption” scandal, with the “corruption” being players receiving some modest remuneration from voluntary buyers/tattoo artists. The players involved, incidentally, got 5-actual-game suspensions for this not-actually-misconduct-at-all. NCAA delenda est.

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