COLUMBUS, Ohio — After a news report that raised questions about what the famed Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer knew about past domestic violence allegations against one of his closest assistant coaches, he wanted to know one important thing. How to delete old text messages on his phone.
Meyer and a top athletic administrator discussed how to adjust the settings, a university report released on Wednesday said, and when Ohio State’s investigators obtained the phone, they discovered no messages on it older than a year.
Still, they gave him the benefit of the doubt, a running theme in the report that found missteps on Meyer’s part related to his handling of the case but no unassailable evidence of a cover-up or that he “deliberately lied” about his knowledge of the case.