
The act of remorse for Urban Meyer
Stops number one and two in Urban Meyer’s Image Reclamation Tour, “Vindicated Via Victory” may be high on alliteration, but shed no light on the situation that engulfed the start of the college football season.
(Note: There’s no name for the tour, but I hope they’d indulge me with something self-congratulatory like the name above.)
Meyer fell into his routine at both the one-on-one interview with ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi and his first press conference off his three-game suspension yesterday. He played all the old standbys with the same robotic ease noticeable in most of his interactions with the media. Before he led into the first encore with “Piano Man” and closed with “You May Be Right,” Meyer reaffirmed “Treat Women with Respect” remains his second core value after honesty. The Ohio State coach repeated the story from 2015 where he threatened to fire Zach Smith on the spot if Meyer found out Smith hit his own wife Courtney.
In both situations Meyer did little to sway anyone’s opinion on what he did or failed to do. The pro-Meyer sect considers the sit down with Rinaldi to be an interview high on remorse and contrition. Meyer goes so far as to blame himself for giving people second and third chances, the same sort of self-loathing that comes from people who recite every volunteer obligation they participated in within the last three years and name modesty as their best character trait.
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No chance that those stupefied by Meyer’s initial comment to Courtney Smith where he apologized for the whole situation and not to her directly were satiated by his subsequent revelations and new-fangled concessions.
Don’t we all sit in the same spot we did before Ohio State suspended Meyer for the first three games of the season?
Sure the Buckeyes are 3-0 and seem to be the class of the B1G, especially after the conference-wide bloodletting on Saturday, but Meyer forced both sides to dig into their first impression. Then again, maybe it wasn’t about either side, but about Meyer himself.
Maybe the interview with Rinaldi gave Meyer the peace of mind to believe his soul-pouring experience filled with a perfunctory recitation of answers to questions he was coached through were enough to unburden any lingering guilt. Meyer can go on ESPN, welcome Rinaldi into his home, and bolstered by only a dining room chair and small bottle of water at his feet, deflect and defend his decision making process.
He can say he at least faced all the questions until the next previously “confidential” report becomes available for public consumption. He can close off the subject matter and get back to football and the highly talented team he finds himself in charge of after a nice little 3-0 start by interim coach Ryan Day.
If Meyer can convince himself of his own innocence it won’t be hard to further convince others to the same sort of decision. The amount of functional adults who paint their face in the name of a university they didn’t attend is not a hard group to coax into anything. Meyer’s track record earned him a lifetime of unbending support from people. His double-down from Sunday and Monday are a way to further entrench his supporters in faithful devotion to Meyer and the coach’s pursuit of his second national championship at Ohio State.
Meyer is smart enough to know the questions will follow for the duration of the season and will pockmark a career where forgiveness is shading closer and closer to recklessness if it hasn’t already. He can at least put himself at ease by letting everyone know he did everything in his power to do the right thing.
And if it’s good enough for him to believe it, it should be good enough for everyone else.