Attention not paid

 I wouldn't know Rex Elliott if he worked for 1-800-555-HURT, but I do know he has the attention span of a gnat. The reason I know is this what he said the other day about his client, a gentleman named Brian Smith.

Smith was the head football coach at Ohio University, until he wasn't. OU fired him after one season not long ago, in which the Bobcats went a respectable 8-4. Based on what OU officials said when they dropkicked him to the curb, it was a hell of a one season.

During it, OU alleges, Smith carried on multiple extramarital affairs, including one with an undergraduate student. He eventually, also allegedly, dumped the the student for a 41-year-old woman. And somewhere in there he (again, allegedly) showed up drunk at a university function.

Elliott, of course, denies all of this. In a sharp fire-back at OU president Lori Stewart Gonzalez, he said Smith "didn't participate in an extramarital affair and you know it," noting that Smith and his wife separated earlier this year. He also said Smith never showed up drunk at any university affair. And then ...

And then Elliott screwed up bigly, as a certain notable reprobate allegedly once said.

In his letter to Gonzalez, he wrote that Ohio University had no policy stating employees couldn't date students, and thus his relationship with the aforementioned student was a "perfectly appropriate consensual adult relationship" that lasted four months. The student, Elliott added, worked in the athletic department and she and Smith dated for about four months until he dumped her for the 41-year-old. 

(And, OK, so he didn't put it in exactly those words. That was me.)

Smith, by the way, is 45 years old. Which would make him roughly twice as old as your average undergrad. Not illegal, perhaps, but definitely "Ewww" as hell.

In which case, this is where an invisible arm reaches down from Ann Arbor, Mich., and smacks Rex Elliott upside the head.

"'Perfectly appropriate consensual adult relationship'?" the invisible body attached to the invisible arm says. "Son, have you NOT been paying attention?"

Because, listen, up there in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan just fired its head football coach for almost exactly the same Perfectly Appropriate Consensual Adult Relationship. This one involved the coach, Sherrone Moore, and a 24-year-old woman. She wasn't a student, but she also worked in the athletic department. In fact she was Moore's top assistant.

The entire sordid situation, of course, blew up into a huge national story. Which apparently never filtered down to the space between Rex Elliott's ears, because there he was this week, protesting OU firing its football coach for behavior remarkably similar to the behavior for which UM fired its football coach.

To reiterate: Son, have you NOT been paying attention?

It seems not.