COLUMBUS (OH)
For the Win
August 23, 2018
By Chris Korman
What happened at Ohio State Wednesday, with Urban Meyer receiving a piddling three-game suspension for clearly and deliberately trying to cover for an assistant coach intent on committing violence against his wife, was disgusting. Even if you’re someone who pays close attention to how sordid college sports can be, it felt like a previously undiscovered and particularly excrement-loaded layer of muck.
There’s not much need for me to tell you how ridiculous this whole thing is. USA TODAY’s Christine Brennan did that already. As did George Schroeder (and there’s a video of Dan Wolken in there, too.) So did Yahoo’s Pat Forde. And ESPN’s Heather Dinich. And this piece — This Is How You Erase A Woman From Her Own Story — from Deadspin’s Diana Moskovitz, is essential. Please read it.
But also know that all of this — and all of its corollaries, like what happened at Baylor and Penn State and all the other places where the misdeeds are spread apart just enough so that the pattern goes unnoticed — is born from a system of college sports that has been rotting from the inside for decades. When you build a multi-billion dollar empire on the backs of unpaid labor and then market it all as not just an extension of what your schools stand for but what your schools actually stand for you end up twisting and twirling the way Ohio State’s leadership did yesterday, and you claim to the public that one of the most ruthlessly efficient coaches in the history of sports is actually a guy who quivers in difficult moments and can be more than a bit forgetful.
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