Sad Day (Not the New Coach)

[saevel25]

  On 12/4/2018 at 4:53 PM, DeadMan said:

You're missing the 2009 incident that Urban Meyer knew about. And you're making the false assumption that Urban's only choices were to fire or retain Zach Smith. OSU is a world-class university. There are resources on campus that could help him handle it better. But his hubris was to decide everything by himself, and hope that his one-on-one counseling session in 2009 was enough.

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Yes, Urban knew about 2009. He tried to get the married couple counseling. They were friends of the family. At least he tried to help them.

  On 12/4/2018 at 4:53 PM, DeadMan said:

By the way, please reevaluate your perspective on Courtney Smith not being a credible person. We have no idea if that's true, but it's also a common trope to paint the victim of domestic abuse as crazy and unbelievable.

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I would not paint her in such a way if not there was testimony from her own mother about how she acts. There are others who collaborate what her mother is saying about Courtney.

I never said she was crazy.

  On 12/4/2018 at 4:53 PM, DeadMan said:

Ad hominem and irrelevant to whether Urban Meyer knew and ignored domestic violence.

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No, but he can drive the narrative unfairly. Which he does routinely. It clearly speaks to his character as a journalist.

  On 12/4/2018 at 4:53 PM, DeadMan said:

Yeah, when his player is implicated in a double shooting (after being in a bar fight earlier that same year), and he doesn't do anything, I'm going to blame him. He really showed his Lessons in Leadership by not doing anything to Hernandez.

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What do you want him to do? Get rid of Hernandez? What will happen to Hernandez then? How would it look if Urban gave up on a kid? There is no win here for Urban.

Listen, that is a bad situation. Hernandez was a disturbed person. You can not blame Urban for Hernandez's actions. That is just stupid.

  On 12/4/2018 at 4:53 PM, DeadMan said:

It's easy to explain away all of these things individually, as you're trying to do. When you look at the whole picture, it's not a pretty one.

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1. Yes, his players in Florida got in trouble. Still, Urban even went to the Gainesville Police and told them not to give his player preferential treatment.

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Ben Tobias, a spokesman for the Gainesville Police Department, wrote in an e-mail that it would be difficult to compare the arrest rate for football players in those years with the general arrest rate for Florida students. He noted that athletes’ arrests generally garnered more attention. He cited a case that made news though it involved only a stolen taco.

Tobias said Meyer visited the police department once to tell the officers not to give his players preferential treatment, which, Tobias added, was already the directive from police officials.

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Should he have kicked a few of them off the team or be more strict, absolutely. Most of them were doing crimes that it pretty typical for kids their age in that area. There is no evidence to show that the rate of these crimes are outside the norm for the demographic of that team. The only reason we see it is because they happen to be football players.

2. He kept on a friend of the family as a coach. He thought that the issues of 2009 were done and when no charges were filed in 2015 he didn't see the need to press into further. A bad choice, but not something out of the ordinary.

Let's look at some good things he did.

1. The Shelly and Urban Meyer Cancer Fund. Raising millions of dollars for Cancer Research.
2. Real Life Wednesdays - A program at Ohio State that brings in speakers and provides workshops for his players so they have a sense of developing a life after football.
3. Player Safety - Through the use of technology and sport science they do a restricted contact program at Ohio State for player safety.
4. His players hardly get in trouble at OSU.

Guess what, he improved how he ran a big time  program the 2nd time around. The only fault we can give him is that he failed to see how bad things have gotten with Zach Smith.

You paint the picture way to bleak for the evidence provided.

[DeadMan]

  On 12/4/2018 at 5:21 PM, saevel25 said:

You paint the picture way to bleak for the evidence provided.

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That maybe true. But anybody who engages in a hagiography for Urban Meyer is pathetic and deserves to be called out. I wanted to vomit when Gus Johnson was talking about "redemption" for Meyer when he was beating Michigan. I will admit that Urban Meyer has done some good. I don't think that makes up for enabling Zach Smith's domestic violence or enabling criminality at Florida.

Acknowledge that Urban Meyer, at minimum, has a complicated history that shows he wasn't a saint (which you did). I will continue to call out people who think he did nothing wrong.

Edited December 4, 2018 by DeadMan

[saevel25]

  On 12/4/2018 at 5:38 PM, DeadMan said:

That maybe true. But anybody who engages in a hagiography for Urban Meyer is pathetic and deserves to be called out. I wanted to vomit when Gus Johnson was talking about "redemption" for Meyer when he was beating Michigan.

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Yea, I don't get the whole redemption thing. Gus Johnson tends to get a bit excited during a broadcast.

  On 12/4/2018 at 5:38 PM, DeadMan said:

I will admit that Urban Meyer has done some good. I don't think that makes up for enabling Zach Smith's domestic violence or enabling criminality at Florida.

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How was he enabling Zach Smith? You think Zach Smith would turn a new leaf if Urban fired him? Urban gave Zach smith 2nd chances on questionable professional behavior. In terms of Domestic Abuse, Urban gave Zach Smith an ultimatum that he would be fired if he touched Courtney. The failure is that Urban took the Powell Police not charging Zach Smith as evidence that nothing happened.

Zach Smith was a friend of the family since Zach was a kid. People give exceptions to a lot of things when it is about family. The Meyers consider Zach Smith as family. It doesn't mean what Zach Smith was OK, but it does explain why he was given such leeway by Meyer. In no way was that enabling him to be a domestic abuser. In no way could Meyer control what Zach Smith ultimately chose to do.

Do you actually think that fire Smith would cure him? What does that do to the family when Smith can not provide them financial support?

It wasn't like he was handing Zach Smith cocaine money because he was broke and needed to a hit.

I agree he was too lax with the Florida players. Again, a young coach at his first big job. He messed up the culture there. Again, he learned from that mistake. It's sad for those players, but Urban is human. The good thing is he learned from it and the players that now benefit from that experience outweighs what happened in Florida.

 

 

[Bucki1968]

Too lax with Florida boosters. The "Bull Gator" boosters didn't give a sh%t about Urban Meyer "enabling criminality". They did care about national championships. Urban Meyer has fallen on the sword for some of the stuff this year. Maybe he just decided no matter how much he liked coaching football he is just sick of the crap that goes on around it. That I can understand. God Bless all the guys who still do it because it's much different than it was 16 years ago. How do you not support your assistant coaches and players? That's what the people who have never done it (coached) will never understand. Did he have blinders on when it came to Zach Smith....maybe....do I understand it.....yea.

[saevel25]

A few notes from the press conference today.

- They selected this time to announce so recruits have time to reflect and make the decision to join OSU or remain an OSU commit. 

- this decision was made because Urban’s style of coaching, that gives him the results he wants, acerbates his medical condition that causes him debilitating headaches. 

- Urban plans on staying in Columbus and being apart of the athletic department in some way. He is talking with Gene Smith about what type of position he could take on.