TALKING TRASH

Zach Smith: OSU Is ‘Spineless,’ Urban Meyer ‘Never Protected’ Me

The former assistant football coach at the center of a domestic abuse scandal lashes out after his firing.

Zach Smith, the former assistant football coach at Ohio State, has called the university “spineless” and claimed that head coach Urban Meyer “never protected” him after his domestic abuse scandal cost him his job and got Meyer suspended for three games. “Urban knew the truth. That’s what’s lost in all this: the truth. Everything he’s said negatively about me, that’s all on Ohio State. That’s all from the pressure they put on him to keep his job because they are spineless,” he told USA Today Sports. ”They are absolutely spineless and that probably come from the board, the president—all of them.” The university said it had no comment in response to Smith’s remarks. OSU launched an independent investigation into what and how much Meyer knew about the domestic abuse allegations against his longtime assistant coach. Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney Smith, reportedly sent text messages with pictures of her injuries to Meyer’s wife, who assured her that she would notify Meyer about the abuse. The report, however, found that Meyer only knew about a 2015 police investigation into Smith’s abuses, not about the text messages. Meyer has since publicly apologized to Courtney Smith, and he is forbidden from making contact with the team until Sept. 16.