The 54-year-old Urban Meyer has announced that he’s retiring from his post as head football coach at Ohio State University after OSU plays at the Rose Bowl. Sports commentators have wondered whether he’s headed to coach at the University of Southern California next.
Meyer, famous for coaching excellent football and covering up for known serial abusers, would be a perfect fit at USC, which does both of those things. In fact, it would be a match made in hell.
The circumstances of Meyer’s retirement eerily mimic those of his “retirement” from the University of Florida. Amid messy drama on the sidelines and a looming sense that Florida was on the decline in the SEC, Meyer cited health problems and bailed, only to wind up at Ohio State a year later. History has repeated itself at OSU, and no doubt Meyer will wind up in a new conference within the year.
[Related: Trump praises Ohio State coach involved in scandal as ‘good man’]
Which brings us to USC.
From both an administrative and athletic perspective, USC has undergone a full-scale crisis of leadership. For the first time in six years, USC will not attend a Bowl Game. Student attendance at football games has plummeted despite the university flushing $300 million into the Coliseum, its home stadium, for renovations. For the first time in over twenty years, USC lost to UC Berkeley, Stanford, and cross-town rival UCLA. Attendance at USC’s home game against its historic rival, undefeated Notre Dame, sank to below 60,000, the lowest in over half a century. So USC needs new blood.
The university’s worst tendency is to bring back legendary figures from the school’s past and engage in the most fickle sort of familial loyalty. Consider all of USC’s athletic directors since the NCAA blasted the university following the Reggie Bush scandal, about which USC remained fairly unapologetic. There was former USC running back Mike Garrett, followed by former USC quarterback Pat Haden, and now former USC wide receiver Lynn Swann.
It took a hire from outside of the USC ecosystem to produce the golden era of Pete Carroll, who presided over victory in two national championships in under a decade. So Meyer would be ripe to pick off competitors in the relatively weak Pac-12.
So why not Meyer as a replacement for current Coach Clay Helton, whose days are certainly numbered? Meyer would fit into USC’s culture so well.
To recap, Meyer brought assistant coach Zach Smith from Florida to OSU years ago. In that time, Smith was arrested multiple times for beating up his wife, once when she was pregnant, and for driving under the influence. Smith’s abuse became so bad that his wife, Courtney, began photographically documenting it and texting Meyer’s wife, Shelley, about it in detail. In violation of federal law and Title IX, Meyer never told his boss or OSU about any of this. As the scandal began to break publicly, Meyer repeatedly lied about his protection of Smith, attempted to destroy evidence, and when given the chance to apologize publicly to Courtney Smith, with a completely straight face and weeks to prepare a statement, Meyer said, “I’m sorry we’re in this situation.”
What a class act. He will fit in perfectly at USC.
USC made national news this summer after it was revealed that the university held on to Dr. George Tyndall as the campus’s sole gynecologist despite three decades worth of complaints that he serially sexually abused female students. To make everything worse, USC ultimately brokered a hush money payout to Tyndall once it realized that investigative reporters had caught wind of the cover-up.
And this was no isolated mistake. The summer before the Tyndall scandal, the Los Angeles Times revealed that USC kept former medical school Dean Carmen Puliafito on staff despite its knowledge that he did meth and cavorted with prostitutes on campus and during working hours. USC replaced Puliafito with Rohit Varma, who had to resign after the Times revealed that USC had previously paid out a six-figure settlement to a woman Varma had sexually harassed.
The scandals surrounding USC grew so distracting that administrators began to brief students on how to “redirect the narrative” and shut down critics.
So you can see how Meyer won’t have a problem fitting in with USC’s campus culture. USC values money, members of the family, and winning above all else. Even though Swann publicly announced that Helton will remain coach, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Swann axed Helton for the promise of a superstar replacement. Former athletic director Pat Haden fired then-Coach Lane Kiffin on the airport tarmac after returning home from a humiliating loss against Arizona State. Firing Helton wouldn’t be much of a step further.
Or Meyer may take a year break for his health issues, which conveniently surface when he needs an out, and come to USC in 2020 to save the day.
Just keep the women away when he does.
