Punishment haze

Three games.

This is what Ohio State deemed acceptable, in the matter of Urban Meyer coddling an apparent serial wife beater. This is what it spent two weeks working up to, using as cover the story that they needed that time to thoroughly investigate whether or not Urban Meyer was properly forthcoming in reporting a 2015 incident in which former assistant coach Zach Smith was again accused of tooling up on his wife, Courtney.

Assuming Ohio State keeps records of such things (and it must, considering the proper procedures are surely documented to make sure the university complies with the law), this "investigation"  should have taken about five minutes. So, yes, this was about finding a publicly palatable way to maintain their credibility while avoiding firing a football coach who A) won a national title at a school where football is all, and B) in so doing, makes that school piles and piles of cash that largely fund the rest of Ohio State athletics.

The bad news for Ohio State: Two weeks wasn't nearly long enough to pull that one off.

In suspending Meyer for three games at the beginning of the season -- three games Ohio State is going to win anyway  -- Ohio State essentially said lying to the media and o school officials is not a fireable offense. That coaches have been fired for less apparently didn't matter.

As for the lying to the media part ... well, coaches lie to the media all the time. Although this was somewhat more serious than lying about who your starting quarterback is going to be.

In any event, presumably Ohio State was OK with all this, opting to hand out the faintest of slaps on the wrist. That's as big a victory as Urban Meyer is going to see this year, even if he delivers another national title.

Unfortunately for OSU, it's not so big a victory for the university as a whole.

Like it or not, see, what yesterday did not do was separate Ohio State from its tarnished brethren at Penn State and Michigan State. If they're Those Schools That Enabled Pedophiles And Sexual Predators, OSU is now That School That Enabled An Apparent Serial Wife Beater. Or that at least didn't take Courtney Smith's repeated pleas for help seriously.

This was jarringly evident from the tone of the news conference after the decision came down. No one -- not athletic director Gene Smith, not Meyer himself -- even uttered Courtney Smith's name. They apologized to the fans. They talked about how difficult this has been for the university. But there was nary an acknowledgment of how tough this has been on the only real apparent victim in all this, nor any breath of apology for how they all let her down.

This is not how you convince people you take domestic violence seriously. And it makes Urban Meyer, who has a history of coddling miscreants, someone whose word you should never believe without raising an eyebrow.

That includes one of the "core values" Meyer has on the wall in the Buckeyes locker room: Treat Women With Respect.

For Urban Meyer, and for Ohio State, that's nothing but a punchline now.

Not sure if that's the W they were all looking for yesterday. I'm guessing not.