I communicated with Stadium college football reporter Brett McMurphy via a message exchange on Saturday morning and asked him to respond to criticism of the relevance of his story Friday on fired Ohio State assistant football coach Zach Smith to the committee investigating the future of head coach Urban Meyer.
McMurphy said the story was published on WatchStadium.com after being reviewed and vetted by multiple attorneys.
Here is the entirety of McMurphy’s response:
“Zach Smith was an employee at Ohio State, having sex with a subordinate in the football offices. He was taking photos of these acts, nude photos of himself in the facility and at an official team function at the White House, with a phone he conducts university business on.
“The staff member he engaged in these sexual acts with (was) re-assigned to another department in 2015, but Zach was not disciplined.
“Zach has all these sex items (more than 30 deliveries in a 12-week span) sent to him -- not at his home -- but his place of employment, a state university that receives both federal and state tax dollars.
This is another example -- along with the 2009 domestic violence arrest at UF (University of Florida), 2013 drunk-driving arrest in Ohio and 2015 domestic violence incidents -- of Zach’s utter lack of credibility, because he continues to say Urban (Meyer) didn’t know anything. Yet they worked together for 11 years.
“One last thing: I have not used one anonymous source in any of my reports and everything -- every single thing -- I’ve reported an employee or employees at Ohio State already had knowledge of.
“Yet Zach Smith remained an Ohio State employee until it became public.”
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