A most responsible man

A day or two in the life of Zach Smith, responsible human being and (more importantly) apple in the eye of Corch:

On Jan. 23, 2016, Jennifer Bula—who at the time was the administrative service manager for the athletic department—emailed associate athletic director Brian Voltolini. The email raised concerns about Smith’s handling of electronic devices. Bula wrote:

[I]n spring/summer Zach left his iPad on a Net Jets plane. They held on to it for a couple of days thinking he would call and pick it up. When he didn’t they shipped it to me and I told [Voltolini] I had it and for Zach to come over and get it. It was in my office for 4-6 weeks and I finally sent it over to football. It was curious that he didn’t have his iPad for over a month and didn’t seem too concerned (??). I don’t even know if he was aware I had it??

… Fifth, Ohio State’s release contained a printout of an email sent by an anonymous person on Aug. 19, 2018 to attorney David Sarratt, a partner at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. Sarratt was one of the attorneys hired by Ohio State to investigate. The person claimed to have been an employee of Sibcy House at Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health and addiction center in Mason, Ohio. The person wrote that Ohio State had directed Smith to seek treatment at the center on account of “multiple substance abuse addictions and/or stimulant overuse or misuse” and also “to determine or rule out if he had a sex addiction.”

The emailer went on to write that Smith prematurely left the program, a point which led the emailer to opine “it didn’t make sense to me why a school like Ohio State would keep him as a coach if he had all of these domestic violence issues, didn’t complete his rehab and the other things he reportedly did in the past several years.”

The article concludes, “… it would suggest that Ohio State was aware of issues with Smith long before he was fired.”  That’s not exactly news.  The problem wasn’t that the school lacked awareness.  It was that Smith’s boss wasn’t going to do anything about it until things became public.

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