It’s a long and brilliant Facebook post:
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IT IS TIME FOR DRAKE'S TENURE AT OHIO STATE TO COME TO AN END
From the moment he arrived in Columbus from University of California-Irvine in June of 2014, Michael Drake seemed somewhat of an odd fit as the 15th president of The Ohio State University.
After growing up in New Jersey, he graduated from Stanford, then earned a medical degree, was considered a prolific fund-raiser as a university president, but had never lived or worked in the Midwest or the Big Ten and had no experience leading a university affiliated with a power-five athletic conference.
A month after arriving at Ohio State, he promptly fired extremely-popular marching band director Jon Waters following an investigation into alleged Title IX violations that was widely-considered flawed and one-sided, ignoring the testimony of many witnesses, many critics claimed. Waters said he did not receive due process and sued the university, which spent more than $1 million to defend his dismissal. (Drake had a similar scandal at Cal-Irvine in 2007 when he fired the dean of the law school, a move that was widely criticized by the school’s alumni base.)
Now five years later, we have much more evidence that Drake is over his head leading one of the nation’s largest universities.
As evidenced by Friday’s ill-advised and poorly-timed – and extremely late -- document-dump involving the investigation last August of the handling of fired assistant coach Zach Smith, he continues to take one misstep after another.
Just three months ago, Ohio State Board of Trustees chairman Michael Gasser resigned, due to a “major rift” with Drake, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
I discovered there are two petitions – one at ipetition.com and the other at thepetitionsite.com – calling for Drake’s dismissal. If you agree with what I am about to declare, feel free to visit these sites and sign your name.
If the media conducted popularity polls for university presidents, as it does for U.S. presidents, Drake’s approval-rating today would be looking up at a decent Major League Baseball batting average.
Justly so. He has not always represented OSU with its best interests in mind nor displayed the leadership needed most during the times the media spotlight has been the hottest.
But Friday’s release of more than 2,000 pages of irrelevant background information – material the university claimed “was related to the Zach Smith investigation” – was something that could have been handled about 10 months ago. Fact is, it was nothing more than a giant smokescreen which allowed Ohio State to successfully claim it has fulfilled its duty under the law, by complying with the numerous public-records requests from the media outlets which made them last August.
The timing of it almost screams, “I will show football who is the boss of the university!”
Drake clearly has fumbled his handling of the final year of Meyer’s tenure, and, just as importantly, Ryan Day’s arrival as head football coach. (Then there are the other scandals that have come to light lately, such as the Richard Strauss sexual-abuse investigation, that have given the university one large black eye. To be fair, Strauss’ misdeeds preceded Drake’s arrival.)
Not to understate its importance, but Meyer led, and now Day leads, a program that pays most of the nations-largest athletic department’s bills and supports most of the 36 men’s and women’s non-revenue sports, other than men’s basketball.
That’s a heavy burden to carry, and thus there is much riding on football’s success or failure besides the wins and losses, as much as some in the university’s administration may want to camouflage that fact. At Big Ten schools, like at most NCAA Division I schools, intercollegiate athletics – specifically football and basketball – are crucial to a university’s financial well-being, whether school presidents hate it or chose to accept it.
Whether it is right or not, history professors are not paid $5 million per year, and 100,000 fans don’t show up to watch a chemistry professor lead his students into the laboratory. Shallow as it may seem, multi-million donations, often are driven by major intercollegiate sports and the pride they generate.
And appreciating that complex relationship between athletics, academics, the student body and alumni is crucial for university presidents at a place like Ohio State.
In Drake’s defense, when you spent the previous nine years at a university that fields mostly Olympic sports, and none of them is football, and none of them attract a crowd of more than 1,500 for any event, and your mascot is known as Peter the Anteater, it does nothing to prepare you for leading a school that boasts the largest athletic program in the NCAA.
Also, if you have been a provost or president of a smaller college or university – and let’s face it, 99 percent of other schools from coast-to-coast are smaller than Ohio State – it is almost impossible to comprehend or somehow prepare for what involves leading a massive university that covers more than 1,800 acres, along with its five regional campuses and the largest alumni base in the world.
If you are not an Ohio State graduate, or have not worked at a comparable university, its sheer size and scope – along with a staff of more than 35,000 and an enrollment of almost 70,000 students and everything that goes with it – certainly can be overwhelming.
Drake wasn’t the first poor presidential hire in the university’s history and he surely won’t be the last.
Karen Holbrook (2002-07) was very unpopular in most alumni’s eyes, for example, and Ed Jennings (1981-90) certainly rubbed many alumni and co-workers the wrong way.
This may be old news for many, but it’s necessary to recap the past year to put what the university did Friday into its proper perspective:
After studying the findings of a two-week investigative report conducted by an independent law firm that was initially supposed to cost $500,000 but the price tag exceeded $1 million, the majority of OSU’s board of trustees wanted to put Meyer back to work that day of August 22. The report had revealed that there was no substantiated domestic violence committed by Smith, whom Meyer had fired a month earlier for an accumulation of other misdeeds.
The report did detail some minor transgressions by Meyer in his supervision of Smith and also revealed that he lied to the media during Big Ten media days a month earlier. Those mistakes, the majority of the board determined, never met the level of a suspension-without-pay offenses, my sources told me last September.
But Drake had other ideas, and the two sides entered into a showdown over Meyer’s fate that lasted 12 hours, as a hoard of media outside the alumni building awaited their decision.
As two members of the board admitted to me last September, the only punishment discussed that day ranged from a four-game suspension to “time served,” meaning Meyer’s three-week administrative leave away from his team during summer camp would serve as his punishment. The majority of the board wanted that last option levied, with Meyer returning to his team that day. But Drake held firm and the two sides settled into a prolonged battle of the wills with neither budging until almost 9 p.m. when the board had to either fire Drake or give in to him. And they surely couldn’t have fired the president that night, which surely would have ignited a national PR nightmare of all nightmares.
When the board finally gave in, they offered Drake one final set of instructions for the late-night press conference that would be televised live on ESPN2: “Make sure you are clear that he is not being suspended for covering up domestic violence.”
But first, Drake met with Urban and Shelley Meyer, informing them that his decision had ranged from “firing as the most severe -- to no suspension at all” and he had compromised by deciding on a three-game suspension. He also said it was a collective decision with the full support of the board. He also told them he “could no longer work for OSU” if he did not impose some sort of suspension.
Not only was it not a collective decision, but firing Meyer was never on the table from the time the trustees reviewed the investigative report. There was not sufficient grounds to fire Meyer, given law enforcement and then the $1 million, independent investigation could not document any domestic abuse committed by Smith. That fact is what prompted trustee Jeffrey Wadsworth to stand up and walk out of the meeting just minutes after it began. He was the lone trustee who wanted Meyer fired and he subsequently resigned from the board over the issue.
Drake then botched the ensuing press conference, as national headlines blared for weeks claiming Meyer was indeed suspended for covering up domestic violence by Smith. That prompted critics from coast-to-coast to assail Ohio State for not firing its championship-winning football coach. The university, they wrote, chose football over its integrity. In the ensuing weeks, Drake didn’t utter a word in his or the university’s defense. He remained as mute as Brutus, who according to mascot code, is never allowed to speak.
Many board members watched the press conference in complete shock, as if Drake had deliberately defied them with his widely-panned performance in front of the media that night. Meyer dejectedly also sat at the head table (as did Athletic Director Gene Smith who also was suspended), mostly staring angrily into space, expecting nothing less than returning to work earlier that day.
He had known much about the Smiths’ “toxic” relationship and messy divorce. He had properly warned Smith “if you ever hit her, you’re gone.” And the Powell police department had confirmed what he had wanted to hear. However, the investigation did reveal a slew of immature misdeeds by Smith, catching Meyer totally by surprise.
Truth is, Meyer has wanted the complete investigation report to be released, knowing it would largely vindicate him of the accusations that initiated the probe in the first place, but it never was. Subsequently, he shocked few when he announced his retirement Dec. 3, two days after winning the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis. He cited his on-going health issues, but the fact that Drake went against the board’s recommendation was as large a factor as anything else.
On the sidelines at Ohio Stadium before the Nebraska-OSU game Nov. 3, 2018, I asked Drake what was delaying the release of the report and why had it not already been released. He told me he was busy greeting people but promised that either a university spokesman or he himself would call me that Monday and explain. I never received a phone call, so I continued to press for the information. Finally, I received an email from the university March 18 informing me that my public-records request had been “denied,” since the material was covered by “attorney-client privilege and would not be released.”
Meanwhile, a BOT member informed me I would never get anywhere, that the university would hide behind attorney-client privilege because “it was a personnel issue.”
Thus, although frustrated and disappointed that Ohio State hid the truth behind that shield, I thought that was the end of this mess, until that email arrived Friday afternoon.
Now, 49 weeks after the investigation concluded and Meyer’s suspension was announced to the world, the administration finally had finished redacting what it wanted redacted. The documents were ready, finally, for public viewing. The fact is, none of the information was directly related to the investigation, and none of the material originated from the law firm that interviewed 40 witnesses and was paid $1 million. It was just a giant batch of text messages, emails, coaches’ contracts, and irrelevant material such as game ticket issues and team charter flight manifests.
(Still, the national media found enough material to blare headlines about Meyer talking Smith out of taking an assistant coach’s job at Alabama, seven months before firing him, as if it was big news. And a day later, Saban claimed the offer was never made because he had conducted a background check. That sequence alone shamed Ohio State by comparison, if Saban is to be believed, but Smith reiterated to me Saturday morning that he indeed was offered the job – even following the results of Saban’s background check. Bear in mind, by January of 2017, he had never been arrested or charged with anything and he still was Earle Bruce’s grandson, a potent recruiter and a seemingly promising assistant coach.)
Friday just happened to be the first day of summer camp under Day, and that giant smokescreen of a document-dump did nothing but burn everyone’s eyes.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. On a day when the media should have been focusing on a new era of Ohio State football, Drake, 68, saw to it that the university – once again – took a giant step backward.
Given what was in this document-dump, and more importantly, what was NOT in it, there is absolutely no reason that this irrelevant material couldn’t have been released to the media by last Thanksgiving, or by the end of 2018 at the latest.
But the university just served up on a silver platter another reason for the media to rehash the entire mess again instead of discussing the upcoming football season.
You have to wonder when the OSU Board of Trustees has seen enough of Drake’s blundering and decide to do the right thing for the university’s future.
I have spoken to several high-powered people who either currently work at, have worked at, or graduated from the university who do indeed want to see Drake, who is under contract through 2021, gone. They seem to think they may have to wait for him to leave on his own, as if he will suddenly sense an overwhelming atmosphere of being unwanted and pick up and leave a million-dollar salary behind. I have asked them to go on the record, but of course, none of them are quite ready. They fear retribution and certainly do not want to become a lone wolf going out on a weak limb.
“Is anybody else commenting on the record for you?” is a common question I hear.
It seems nobody wants to be the first.
The trustees once ushered popular president Gordon Gee (now president of West Virginia University), whose only real offense were occasional attempts at humor that offended the PC police and fell flat as a pancake, out the proverbial door.
Now it’s become more than obvious that they should do the same with Michael Drake.
I for one, however, won’t hold my breath.”
Disclosure: JEFF SNOOK IS A 1982 GRADUATE FROM THE OHIO STATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.
“
IT IS TIME FOR DRAKE'S TENURE AT OHIO STATE TO COME TO AN END
From the moment he arrived in Columbus from University of California-Irvine in June of 2014, Michael Drake seemed somewhat of an odd fit as the 15th president of The Ohio State University.
After growing up in New Jersey, he graduated from Stanford, then earned a medical degree, was considered a prolific fund-raiser as a university president, but had never lived or worked in the Midwest or the Big Ten and had no experience leading a university affiliated with a power-five athletic conference.
A month after arriving at Ohio State, he promptly fired extremely-popular marching band director Jon Waters following an investigation into alleged Title IX violations that was widely-considered flawed and one-sided, ignoring the testimony of many witnesses, many critics claimed. Waters said he did not receive due process and sued the university, which spent more than $1 million to defend his dismissal. (Drake had a similar scandal at Cal-Irvine in 2007 when he fired the dean of the law school, a move that was widely criticized by the school’s alumni base.)
Now five years later, we have much more evidence that Drake is over his head leading one of the nation’s largest universities.
As evidenced by Friday’s ill-advised and poorly-timed – and extremely late -- document-dump involving the investigation last August of the handling of fired assistant coach Zach Smith, he continues to take one misstep after another.
Just three months ago, Ohio State Board of Trustees chairman Michael Gasser resigned, due to a “major rift” with Drake, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
I discovered there are two petitions – one at ipetition.com and the other at thepetitionsite.com – calling for Drake’s dismissal. If you agree with what I am about to declare, feel free to visit these sites and sign your name.
If the media conducted popularity polls for university presidents, as it does for U.S. presidents, Drake’s approval-rating today would be looking up at a decent Major League Baseball batting average.
Justly so. He has not always represented OSU with its best interests in mind nor displayed the leadership needed most during the times the media spotlight has been the hottest.
But Friday’s release of more than 2,000 pages of irrelevant background information – material the university claimed “was related to the Zach Smith investigation” – was something that could have been handled about 10 months ago. Fact is, it was nothing more than a giant smokescreen which allowed Ohio State to successfully claim it has fulfilled its duty under the law, by complying with the numerous public-records requests from the media outlets which made them last August.
The timing of it almost screams, “I will show football who is the boss of the university!”
Drake clearly has fumbled his handling of the final year of Meyer’s tenure, and, just as importantly, Ryan Day’s arrival as head football coach. (Then there are the other scandals that have come to light lately, such as the Richard Strauss sexual-abuse investigation, that have given the university one large black eye. To be fair, Strauss’ misdeeds preceded Drake’s arrival.)
Not to understate its importance, but Meyer led, and now Day leads, a program that pays most of the nations-largest athletic department’s bills and supports most of the 36 men’s and women’s non-revenue sports, other than men’s basketball.
That’s a heavy burden to carry, and thus there is much riding on football’s success or failure besides the wins and losses, as much as some in the university’s administration may want to camouflage that fact. At Big Ten schools, like at most NCAA Division I schools, intercollegiate athletics – specifically football and basketball – are crucial to a university’s financial well-being, whether school presidents hate it or chose to accept it.
Whether it is right or not, history professors are not paid $5 million per year, and 100,000 fans don’t show up to watch a chemistry professor lead his students into the laboratory. Shallow as it may seem, multi-million donations, often are driven by major intercollegiate sports and the pride they generate.
And appreciating that complex relationship between athletics, academics, the student body and alumni is crucial for university presidents at a place like Ohio State.
In Drake’s defense, when you spent the previous nine years at a university that fields mostly Olympic sports, and none of them is football, and none of them attract a crowd of more than 1,500 for any event, and your mascot is known as Peter the Anteater, it does nothing to prepare you for leading a school that boasts the largest athletic program in the NCAA.
Also, if you have been a provost or president of a smaller college or university – and let’s face it, 99 percent of other schools from coast-to-coast are smaller than Ohio State – it is almost impossible to comprehend or somehow prepare for what involves leading a massive university that covers more than 1,800 acres, along with its five regional campuses and the largest alumni base in the world.
If you are not an Ohio State graduate, or have not worked at a comparable university, its sheer size and scope – along with a staff of more than 35,000 and an enrollment of almost 70,000 students and everything that goes with it – certainly can be overwhelming.
Drake wasn’t the first poor presidential hire in the university’s history and he surely won’t be the last.
Karen Holbrook (2002-07) was very unpopular in most alumni’s eyes, for example, and Ed Jennings (1981-90) certainly rubbed many alumni and co-workers the wrong way.
This may be old news for many, but it’s necessary to recap the past year to put what the university did Friday into its proper perspective:
After studying the findings of a two-week investigative report conducted by an independent law firm that was initially supposed to cost $500,000 but the price tag exceeded $1 million, the majority of OSU’s board of trustees wanted to put Meyer back to work that day of August 22. The report had revealed that there was no substantiated domestic violence committed by Smith, whom Meyer had fired a month earlier for an accumulation of other misdeeds.
The report did detail some minor transgressions by Meyer in his supervision of Smith and also revealed that he lied to the media during Big Ten media days a month earlier. Those mistakes, the majority of the board determined, never met the level of a suspension-without-pay offenses, my sources told me last September.
But Drake had other ideas, and the two sides entered into a showdown over Meyer’s fate that lasted 12 hours, as a hoard of media outside the alumni building awaited their decision.
As two members of the board admitted to me last September, the only punishment discussed that day ranged from a four-game suspension to “time served,” meaning Meyer’s three-week administrative leave away from his team during summer camp would serve as his punishment. The majority of the board wanted that last option levied, with Meyer returning to his team that day. But Drake held firm and the two sides settled into a prolonged battle of the wills with neither budging until almost 9 p.m. when the board had to either fire Drake or give in to him. And they surely couldn’t have fired the president that night, which surely would have ignited a national PR nightmare of all nightmares.
When the board finally gave in, they offered Drake one final set of instructions for the late-night press conference that would be televised live on ESPN2: “Make sure you are clear that he is not being suspended for covering up domestic violence.”
But first, Drake met with Urban and Shelley Meyer, informing them that his decision had ranged from “firing as the most severe -- to no suspension at all” and he had compromised by deciding on a three-game suspension. He also said it was a collective decision with the full support of the board. He also told them he “could no longer work for OSU” if he did not impose some sort of suspension.
Not only was it not a collective decision, but firing Meyer was never on the table from the time the trustees reviewed the investigative report. There was not sufficient grounds to fire Meyer, given law enforcement and then the $1 million, independent investigation could not document any domestic abuse committed by Smith. That fact is what prompted trustee Jeffrey Wadsworth to stand up and walk out of the meeting just minutes after it began. He was the lone trustee who wanted Meyer fired and he subsequently resigned from the board over the issue.
Drake then botched the ensuing press conference, as national headlines blared for weeks claiming Meyer was indeed suspended for covering up domestic violence by Smith. That prompted critics from coast-to-coast to assail Ohio State for not firing its championship-winning football coach. The university, they wrote, chose football over its integrity. In the ensuing weeks, Drake didn’t utter a word in his or the university’s defense. He remained as mute as Brutus, who according to mascot code, is never allowed to speak.
Many board members watched the press conference in complete shock, as if Drake had deliberately defied them with his widely-panned performance in front of the media that night. Meyer dejectedly also sat at the head table (as did Athletic Director Gene Smith who also was suspended), mostly staring angrily into space, expecting nothing less than returning to work earlier that day.
He had known much about the Smiths’ “toxic” relationship and messy divorce. He had properly warned Smith “if you ever hit her, you’re gone.” And the Powell police department had confirmed what he had wanted to hear. However, the investigation did reveal a slew of immature misdeeds by Smith, catching Meyer totally by surprise.
Truth is, Meyer has wanted the complete investigation report to be released, knowing it would largely vindicate him of the accusations that initiated the probe in the first place, but it never was. Subsequently, he shocked few when he announced his retirement Dec. 3, two days after winning the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis. He cited his on-going health issues, but the fact that Drake went against the board’s recommendation was as large a factor as anything else.
On the sidelines at Ohio Stadium before the Nebraska-OSU game Nov. 3, 2018, I asked Drake what was delaying the release of the report and why had it not already been released. He told me he was busy greeting people but promised that either a university spokesman or he himself would call me that Monday and explain. I never received a phone call, so I continued to press for the information. Finally, I received an email from the university March 18 informing me that my public-records request had been “denied,” since the material was covered by “attorney-client privilege and would not be released.”
Meanwhile, a BOT member informed me I would never get anywhere, that the university would hide behind attorney-client privilege because “it was a personnel issue.”
Thus, although frustrated and disappointed that Ohio State hid the truth behind that shield, I thought that was the end of this mess, until that email arrived Friday afternoon.
Now, 49 weeks after the investigation concluded and Meyer’s suspension was announced to the world, the administration finally had finished redacting what it wanted redacted. The documents were ready, finally, for public viewing. The fact is, none of the information was directly related to the investigation, and none of the material originated from the law firm that interviewed 40 witnesses and was paid $1 million. It was just a giant batch of text messages, emails, coaches’ contracts, and irrelevant material such as game ticket issues and team charter flight manifests.
(Still, the national media found enough material to blare headlines about Meyer talking Smith out of taking an assistant coach’s job at Alabama, seven months before firing him, as if it was big news. And a day later, Saban claimed the offer was never made because he had conducted a background check. That sequence alone shamed Ohio State by comparison, if Saban is to be believed, but Smith reiterated to me Saturday morning that he indeed was offered the job – even following the results of Saban’s background check. Bear in mind, by January of 2017, he had never been arrested or charged with anything and he still was Earle Bruce’s grandson, a potent recruiter and a seemingly promising assistant coach.)
Friday just happened to be the first day of summer camp under Day, and that giant smokescreen of a document-dump did nothing but burn everyone’s eyes.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. On a day when the media should have been focusing on a new era of Ohio State football, Drake, 68, saw to it that the university – once again – took a giant step backward.
Given what was in this document-dump, and more importantly, what was NOT in it, there is absolutely no reason that this irrelevant material couldn’t have been released to the media by last Thanksgiving, or by the end of 2018 at the latest.
But the university just served up on a silver platter another reason for the media to rehash the entire mess again instead of discussing the upcoming football season.
You have to wonder when the OSU Board of Trustees has seen enough of Drake’s blundering and decide to do the right thing for the university’s future.
I have spoken to several high-powered people who either currently work at, have worked at, or graduated from the university who do indeed want to see Drake, who is under contract through 2021, gone. They seem to think they may have to wait for him to leave on his own, as if he will suddenly sense an overwhelming atmosphere of being unwanted and pick up and leave a million-dollar salary behind. I have asked them to go on the record, but of course, none of them are quite ready. They fear retribution and certainly do not want to become a lone wolf going out on a weak limb.
“Is anybody else commenting on the record for you?” is a common question I hear.
It seems nobody wants to be the first.
The trustees once ushered popular president Gordon Gee (now president of West Virginia University), whose only real offense were occasional attempts at humor that offended the PC police and fell flat as a pancake, out the proverbial door.
Now it’s become more than obvious that they should do the same with Michael Drake.
I for one, however, won’t hold my breath.”
Disclosure: JEFF SNOOK IS A 1982 GRADUATE FROM THE OHIO STATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.
