The Columbus Dispatch's Ohio State football beat writer Tim May has been closely following the Urban Meyer situation from the start, and on Tuesday, he spoke to Paul Finebaum, giving his perspective on the investigation and prediction for how it could turn out.
May told Finebaum that he would not be surprised to see the Ohio State head coach reinstated as early as this week.
"But the more I hear about this thing, basically the way I hear it, Urban Meyer followed the letter of the law as it's written out by Ohio State like he said three weeks ago or two-and-a-half weeks ago," May said. "I would not be surprised to see him – I don't know if ‘exonerated’ is the right word because this isn't a legal forum, but I wouldn't be surprised to maybe see him come out of this ready to go back on the field maybe as early as Wednesday afternoon or Thursday."
May did hedge a little, saying that with the number of variables at play – the Board of Trustees, Ohio State President Michael Drake, the investigative committee – it's difficult to completely pin down what's going to happen.
“What I’m saying is I still don’t know what’s going to come down tomorrow,” May told Finebaum.
May spoke highly of the investigative team's thoroughness. He said the team knew of everything within Brett McMurphy's report regarding Zach Smith's office affairs, nude photographs and sex toy purchases long beforehand.
“As I’ve come to find out, the investigators were already asking questions about that before that ever came out," May said. "These guys… this law firm was very well prepared and turned over a lot of rocks.”
May went to bat for Urban Meyer against the belief, held by some, that he lied to reporters in Chicago for Big Ten Media Days.
“I know he was responding to what had been reported the night before that there was an arrest and a charge and there was not,” May told Finebaum. “As he explained a week and a half later, he was aware of the allegation, but clearly the city of Powell police and Ohio State as we've come to find out, checked into that. I mean they looked into that and there was no arrest and charge.
“This all kind of started because Urban Meyer got sort of jacked about the fact that he had let an arrest and charge of domestic abuse go unpenalized or whatever the word you want to use there is. And that was erroneous. There was no arrest or charge there and that kind of got the fire that really got this going.”
He also said Ohio State was in the process of firing Smith prior to McMurphy's July 23 report of an incident in Gainesville, in which Smith was briefly charged, and another in Powell in 2015 that saw no charges brought against the wide receivers coach.
“Ohio State had already started the move to terminate him earlier in the day on Monday the way I understood it and there was just kind of a coincidence from the standpoint of when Brett McMurphy's story came out.”
The final decision is expected within the day or two as the Ohio State Board of Trustees meets Wednesday morning to discuss the findings of the investigation, and an announcement will follow shortly after.
