Urban Meyer and the Missed Signs at Ohio State

COLUMBUS, Ohio — 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.

The question, however, is whether Mr. Meyer, 54, one of the best-known and highest-paid coaches in college football who has won three national championships, looked the other way or was cut a wide berth by those who dared not challenge him regarding an individual so close to him.

The report, conducted by investigators commissioned by the university, led to the university’s trustees and its president, Michael V. Drake, suspending Mr. Meyer for three games on Wednesday night for mishandling Mr. Smith’s recurring professional and behavioral issues, including domestic violence allegations, drug abuse and poor job performance.

“Repeatedly,” the report said, “Zach Smith’s conduct was met with reprimands and warnings by Coach Meyer, but never a written report, never an investigation and no disciplinary action until July 23, 2018,” when Mr. Smith was fired after his former wife, Courtney Smith, got an order of protection against him. She spoke out in a news report about their relationship, saying Mr. Smith had shoved her against a wall and put his hands around her neck in 2015.

Mr. Meyer knew about it, though he gave conflicting accounts about when he found out, and neither he nor the athletic director, Gene Smith, reported it to the proper school administrators, the report said. (Gene Smith has been suspended for two weeks.)

Taken together, the report, other documents that the university released and interviews cast Mr. Meyer as either largely oblivious or forgiving of the growing litany of problems around Zach Smith.

“I followed my heart, not my head,” Mr. Meyer said after the university report was released.

Yet it was clear investigators were flummoxed and frustrated by his explanations and by apparent efforts by people around him to protect one of the most powerful figures in college football.

When a news report surfaced in July about Ms. Smith’s order of protection, Mr. Meyer’s reaction was to consult an administrator over how to delete old texts on his cellphone, which investigators examined and discovered was missing messages from over a year ago.

The investigators said they were “troubled” by Mr. Meyer’s interest in changing the settings on his phone.

“Often, although not always, such reactions evidence consciousness of guilt,” the report said.

Without telling anyone at Ohio State about the 2009 allegations, Mr. Meyer hired Mr. Smith at Ohio State before the 2012 season and either did not notice or looked the other way as his young assistant demonstrated increasing reckless behavior known, the report said, to several people on the football staff.

After learning of Mr. Smith’s night in May 2014 at the strip club, Mr. Meyer revised the coaches’ manual that year to include a “morality clause” instructing staff to avoid such places and prohibiting pornography on university-issued devices. Mr. Meyer did not report the episode to the university’s athletic compliance department.

In February 2015, however, Mr. Smith received a $50,000 raise that increased his annual salary to $220,000.

As Mr. Smith’s marriage deteriorated, his behavior became more erratic and his job performance suffered. Mr. Smith’s credit cards and some replacement cards he provided were declined on at least three occasions, which the travel office discovered while making rental-car reservations, according to the report.

He was delinquent in paying for his cellphone and for costs associated with bowl games, the report said, citing accounts by staff members. In an email sent on Jan. 23, 2016, Jennifer Bulla, the department’s travel manager, made Mr. Smith aware of the discrepancies.

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.

Zach Smith’s problematic behavior continued, the report said. He took sexually explicit photos of himself at the White House during a team visit in April 2015, a few months after the Buckeyes won the national championship. He had a sexual relationship with a secretary on the football staff. He had sex toys delivered to Ohio State’s football offices.

Neither Mr. Meyer nor Gene Smith appeared to be aware of these things, the report said, though certain members of the football staff were.

In October 2015, Mr. Meyer was notified by Gene Smith that Zach Smith was being investigated for an accusation of domestic violence by the authorities in Powell, Ohio, and could be arrested at any time. Gene Smith, who had learned of the investigation from another official after the campus police department learned of it, ordered him to come home from a recruiting trip.

Mr. Smith denied the accusation. Mr. Meyer kept tabs on the investigation and spoke repeatedly to Zach Smith.

If “you hit her, you are fired,” Mr. Meyer told him.

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.

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.

Mr. Smith was like family to Mr. Meyer. Mr. Bruce, his grandfather who died in April, had given Mr. Meyer his first job in college football as a Buckeyes graduate assistant and employed him again on his staff at Colorado State. It was Mr. Bruce who told Mr. Meyer that he was ready to be a head coach and offered his endorsement for the position at Bowling Green.

It was Mr. Bruce who directed Mr. Smith to try out for the team at Bowling Green as a walk-on so that Mr. Meyer could start teaching his grandson.

Mr. Bruce offered advice while Mr. Meyer guided Utah through an undefeated season and then led the University of Florida to two national titles.

In 2011, Mr. Meyer, a native of Ohio, took the Ohio State job. Mr. Meyer wrote in his 2015 memoir, “Above the Line,” that Mr. Bruce was “practically a second father.”

The success Mr. Meyer has delivered at Ohio State (a national championship in 2014) and the revenue it has generated ($7 million for every home game) has heightened expectations for football might.

Still, there was consensus among the board, said a person familiar with its deliberations, that Mr. Meyer should be punished in some fashion for his handling of Mr. Smith.

But the report challenged Mr. Meyer’s — as well as his wife’s — accounts of a number things.

While Mr. Meyer told Ohio State investigators that in 2009 the Smiths had met with him, and that Courtney Smith had said Mr. Smith had not hit her, the report could not corroborate such statements and concluded: “We find it more likely that only Zach Smith met with Coach Meyer in 2009, and that Courtney Smith likely did not recant her allegations of abuse at that time to Urban” or his wife, Shelley Meyer.

A university spokesman declined to make Mr. Meyer available to comment Thursday.

Courtney Smith could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Smith declined to comment. His lawyer, Brad Koffel, said in an interview, “It is a very tough environment to be Zach Smith right now.”

“Some of the information out there is true,” Mr. Koffel added, “some of it false and some lacks context.”

Mr. Smith’s father, Tim, 58, said, “It’s very hard to hear things about your kid that I know are not true.”

“Many people,” he added, “just don’t know what they are talking about. We know who he is and who he is not.”

Mr. Meyer will not return to the sidelines for a game until Sept. 22, when Ohio State plays at home against Tulane. He can attend practices starting Sept. 2.

Ohio State is ranked No. 5 in The Associated Press preseason poll.