Ohio State Athletics promotes picture from Urban Meyer’s infamous night out, then deletes it

Saturday’s Ohio State game against Nebraska saw Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff in attendance. That fit well with OSU choosing that game to honor the 10th anniversary of the 2014 national champion Buckeyes (victors in the inaugural College Football Playoff), with the coach of that team, Urban Meyer, now a Big Noon panelist.

But Meyer’s legacy with the Buckeyes is complicated. He certainly found significant success coaching them from 2012-18, going 83-9 overall and winning that title, but also hit major controversies. Those were particularly of note around Courtney Smith’s 2018 allegations of domestic abuse from husband and Ohio State coach Zach Smith (which saw the school’s board suspend Meyer for three games over claims he knew of the abuse), but people went after Meyer for other things as well, including scandals from his time coaching the Florida Gators.

While Meyer retired after the 2018 season and joined Fox for 2019, he put TV on hold to coach the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars in 2021. And he created particular controversy in that role over a bye-week visit to his “Urban Chophouse” restaurant in Columbus, where photos and videos came out of him touching a woman who was not his wife (and his explanations left much to be desired). And one of those photos got promoted by Ohio State’s official athletic department X account Saturday, in a call for game-day photos to show on the stadium screen. They’ve since deleted that, but here’s a screenshot:

That photo, in a less cropped form, can be seen with the original caption here:

The crop there by the woman holding this Saturday is excellent. Without context of the history involved, and without the woman in the photo, that looks like a normal photo of Meyer. And that helps explain why the official Ohio State athletics account didn’t see an issue with featuring it at first (although really, you think they’d be on the lookout for Meyer memes here). But yeah, that’s probably not what they officially wanted to emphasize on a day where they were honoring Meyer and the 2014 team.