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Ohio State investigation didn’t attempt to recover Urban Meyer’s deleted texts
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The investigation into Urban Meyer concluded a month ago and the Ohio State head coach is set to return to the sideline this Saturday. But there are still plenty of questions surrounding his handling of Zach Smith’s history of domestic violence.
On Wednesday, more information came to light regarding Ohio State’s investigation in Meyer. According to the Wall Street Journal, the independent team conducting the review failed to send Meyer’s phone to a forensics lab to determine if he actually destroyed evidence.
Investigators also failed to get more information from the device that athletic director Gene Smith turned over, which contained no text. Smith said he routinely deleted text messages from his phone, which could be against Ohio open records law and school policy.
When asked why the investigative team didn’t dive deeper into the deleted text messages, a spokeswoman at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP issued the following statement:
The Debevoise spokesman said investigators “determined they already had strong, indisputable evidence” on the core issue they were asked to probe—whether Mr. Meyer and Gene Smith knew of a 2015 police investigation into domestic violence allegations against Zach Smith.
Debevoise and Plimpton LLP is the law firm where Mary Jo White is a partner. She headed up the investigate team into the situation.
In his weekly press conference earlier this week, Meyer adamantly denied deleted text messages. He also said he doesn’t know how to delete messages from his phone.
In the report, Meyer was said to have asked an Ohio State staffer how to delete messages from his phone. No messages older than one year were found on Meyer’s device.
Meyer is scheduled to return to the sideline this Saturday as Ohio State hosts Tulane.
Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB