Biglaw

The Ohio State Hires Biglaw Firm To Dot The 'I' On Urban Meyer

The university plans to wrap up the investigation in 14 days.

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(Photo by Gene Lower/WireImage)

Maybe you think that swing voters in Ohio spent the weekend following Donald Trump’s callous decision to throw his own son under the bus on Twitter. Or maybe you think they were following the battle between Trump and “Ohio’s favorite son,” LeBron James.

I assure you, low-information “swing” voters who can’t even be bothered to be “political” cared about a “favorite son,” but not the King. Last week, Urban Meyer, head football coach at (the) Ohio State University, was put on paid leave after one of his assistant coaches became embroiled in a domestic violence dispute.

If you haven’t been following along with that story, well you are just as alien to me as the people who don’t know that over 30 people have already been charged in connection with the Russia probe. The quick and dirty version is that Meyer assistant Zach Smith has been accused by his ex-wife of domestic violence, and there’s documentation of incidents that go as far back as 2009. Meyer was aware of these incidents, didn’t fire Smith until just recently, and then lied about what he knew about the incidents at Big Ten media day last week.

Urban Meyer is the highest-paid public employee in the state of Ohio, which is not unusual for top college football and men’s basketball coaches, but bears repeating every time because America is stupid. Meyer is extremely important in and to the state of Ohio, and suspending him a month before the start of the season is a huge deal.

Ohio State has commissioned an investigation into what Meyer knew, when he knew it, and whether he followed appropriate procedures for reporting domestic violence. They’ve commissioned Mary Jo White — now back at Debevoise & Plimpton which is where the former SEC chairwoman goes when Republicans are in power — to lead the investigation.

According to reports, Ohio State is promising that the investigation will take 14 days. From CBSSports:

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In a statement released late Sunday night, Ohio State announced that it plans to have its investigation into coach Urban Meyer and what he did or did not know regarding former assistant Zach Smith’s history of alleged domestic violence wrapped up at some point over the next 14 days.

I know this is a difficult concept for a football school, but you can’t just pull out a stopwatch on everything and demand results. Holding an independent investigation to an arbitrary time constraint is a good way to get a pre-ordained result. It seems like Debevoise is being brought in to rubber stamp whatever decision the administration has already made, before Ohio State kicks off against Oregon State on September 1st.

That said, even if the administration has already tacitly made its decision on Meyer’s future, we really don’t know which result they prefer at this point. It’d be easy to fire Meyer: he lied to the press about what he knew about domestic violence happening on his own staff. For all non-Trumpian public figures, lying is a good way to get fired.

On the other hand, it would be easy for tOSU to keep Meyer. He is one of three football coaches in history who have won national championships at two different schools. Former Florida football coach Jim McElwain could have lied about death threats AND actually humped a shark and he’d still have a job if he’d won more.

I guess we’ll know Meyer’s future soon. Even if he’s fired for covering up domestic violence, I’m sure Baylor would hire him.

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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