COURTNEY SMITH'S MOTHER CLAIMS SAYS ZACH SMITH WAS NOT ABUSIVE AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN FIRED -- AND POWELL POLICE COMMUNICATED EVIDENCE TO OHIO STATE
BY JEFF SNOOK
Tina Carano, Courtney Carano Smith’s mother, originally didn’t want to speak publicly about her daughter’s and her ex-husband Zach Smith’s volatile relationship that resulted in Smith’s firing and the current investigation of the Ohio State football program, leaving head coach Urban Meyer on paid-administrative leave.
But “enough is enough,” she said Monday morning.
“I wanted to stay out of this mess,” she said. “But I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take all of these lies that are being written. I just want the truth out there once and for all. What’s right is right. It’s been horrible for me to see the lies that were being written about Zach when he didn’t do what he was accused of doing.
“He lost his job over something that didn’t happen.”
Smith, her former son-in-law, was fired as Ohio State’s receivers coach July 23 after it was revealed his ex-wife had obtained a protective order against him July 20 In Delaware County. He also had received a misdemeanor citation for criminal trespass after a May 12 incident at her Powell, Ohio, residence, in an incident when Zach Smith dropped off his son. He has pleaded not guilty.
“When Zach got fired, I was in disbelief that it happened the way it did. I was trying to stay out of it, but I really wanted to come forward and tell the whole story,” Tina Carano said. “I do want to see and have a relationship with my grandchildren someday.
“But the fact is that Courtney set him up in this whole thing. She was determined to bring him down and she wanted to keep her current boyfriend, who didn’t want Zach around.”
Carano, who currently is estranged from her 33-year-old daughter, said she was shocked when the scandal led to Meyer, who was placed on paid-administrative leave Aug. 3.
“I was in even more disbelief,” she said. “The first thing that came to my mind is that is what she wanted all along. She was trying to take him down, too. If Urban Meyer gets fired over this, that is frightening to me. My grandson is about to go into the third grade and he would be bullied over this. Kids are so mean to each other and this really concerns me. (Meyer) doesn’t deserve this. He didn’t cover up anything, because there was nothing to cover up. This entire mess was all about revenge and about my daughter being vindictive.’’
When asked about the nine police calls to Courtney Smith’s residence from 2012 to 2018, Tina Carano answered, “When the police came to the house all the time, there was no reason to charge him. That’s why there are no charges or arrests for domestic violence. Courtney claimed that Ohio State knew. Well, there were charges to know about. What are they supposed to do, take her word over his if there is no evidence? They can’t do that.”
A 2015 incident in which the Powell police were called to Courtney Smith’s residence is at the heart of the investigation into Meyer’s role. Meyer said in a statement two weeks ago that he properly reported the incident to university officials.
Carano also said she is sure the Powell police communicated what they had discovered to the Ohio State athletic department over this incident, too. Thus, she claimed, there would have been no reason to fire Smith then.
“In 2015, if any of this was justified, he should have been fired then,” she said. “He wasn’t because none of this was justified. They couldn’t fire him if there was nothing to it.”
Carano claims Zach Smith was the one who could have had her daughter arrested in the past.
Carano, who now lives in Marco Island, Fla., detailed her daughter’s rage in one episode when she hosted her two grandchildren, now 8 and 6, at her residence at 10400 Braemar Drive in Powell.
“In June or July of 2015 after they got separated, we all were at my condo and Zach was picking up or dropping off the kids,” she explained. “Courtney got mad about something, she then got into her car and she deliberately tried to run him over with her car. Zach had to jump out of the way and I thought she actually had run him over. Courtney didn’t care that her own kids were there at the time.”
Asked why Zach then did not call the police, Tina responded, “He could have gone to the police and had her arrested, but he would never do that.”
In another incident more recently, in 2017, Tina claims Courtney believed Zach had placed a hidden video camera in her residence, so she called the Powell police department.
“They sent someone out … I think it was a detective and they did a clean sweep of the place and found nothing,” Tina said. “She then found somebody to go through it a second time, and that person found nothing. She was just paranoid.”
Zach Smith confirmed both incidents Monday, but did not want to elaborate.
Carano says her daughter’s obsession for getting payback at her ex-husband likely stems from the fact Zach Smith was unfaithful, which he has admitted.
“Zach realizes he was 100 percent wrong,” Tina explained. “I am not excusing that. He admits he was a horrible husband. He doesn’t deny that, but he never hit my daughter. It was just the opposite: She hit him often. She would start hitting him just to start a fight. He would have to grab her arms tight to get control of her. I am sure that left the marks on her arms which everybody saw the pictures of.
“It is wrong for anybody to put their hands on anybody else and that includes a wife beating her husband. Why is that it that people think of domestic abuse and they only think of it the other way around? That is not right. I have known all along who was at fault here. I know how she gets. He told me several times, ‘She hits me.’
“Let me tell you another thing: If my daughter was being beaten by her husband, my ex-husband (Courtney’s father) would step in, but both of us knew the real picture. The fact is that she is out of control when she drinks. We all know that. He just doesn’t want anything to do with making it public – and I felt the same way at first.”
Carano also said her daughter “has been verbally abusive to me and my 84-year-old mother, her grandmother. Nobody in my family wants anything to do with her anymore, and it has nothing to do with Zach. It is how she has treated us.
“I came up in May to help her and we got into an argument with my mother there. She then called me every name in the book, then turned on my mother and then kicked me and my mother out of her house. We both have helped her so much throughout her life. My mom helped her with her student loans, cooked for her and the kids, did her laundry. And who kicks their grandmother, 84 years old, out of their house like that? She just gets out of control when she drinks.”
Tina also claimed most of Courtney’s friends have ended their friendships in recent years, because “they got tired of hearing her obsess over Zach all the time.”
Tina also set the Smiths met at the University of Kentucky when one of her sorority sisters, who happened to be a classmate of Zach Smith’s at Dublin Coffman, set the two up on a date. That sorority sister are no longer close to Courtney Smith, either, Tina claimed.
“I think she has two or three friends left locally,” she said. “And then there’s Michelle ...”
As in Michelle Herman, wife of Texas Longhorns head coach Tom Herman. While Ohio State’s offensive coordinator from 2012-14, Herman and Smith became close at one time. Their wives, Tina said, became even closer.
“They were best friends,” she said. “But Michelle doesn’t live local anymore, so now it’s a long-distance friendship now. Courtney and Michelle are still very close. They still talk and text … absolutely. Michelle even told Courtney a while ago that she knew the right people and that she could get interviews and that she could also get her a book deal.”
Carano also said Michelle Herman “Once called a high-profile attorney to see if he would represent Courtney. They needed someone that wasn’t OSU-affiliated.”
Courtney Smith’s current attorney, Julia Leveridge, received her undergraduate degree at the University of Kentucky in 1997 and her law degree from Capital University in 2000.
On Saturday, Herman denied being involved in Courtney Smith-Zach Smith situation, and denied playing a role in how it became public with Brett McMurphy’s initial reporting, but he did admit to helping Courtney with a “one-time loan.” The money was to pay for Courtney’s attorney fees, several sources said.
Tina claimed that Courtney received “a substantial amount monthly” from Zach Smith, which covered alimony and child support, since their divorce, which she filed for in November, 2015, following a five-month separation. Courtney Smith is currently enrolled in nursing school at Chamberlain University. When Zach Smith received a raise in the off-season to increase his salary to $340,000 annually, Courtney planned to file the appropriate paperwork to ask for her child support to be increased, her mother claimed.
As far as her own texts she supposedly sent to Zach Smith in 2015, which McMurphy published, she said she doesn’t remember sending them. “If they are real, and they do exist, I cannot honestly remember it,” she said. “If I did it, and I am not sure I did it, I think I told (Zach) not to touch her and the arguing has got to stop … something just so those two would stop fighting and stop arguing. I just wanted peace in their relationship, for the kids’ sake.”
Carano wanted to make another thing perfectly clear: “Both of them are great parents,” she said. “Zach is a great father and Courtney is a great mother, in spite of all this. They both love their kids. But now their kids are exposed to this mess.
“It breaks my heart, because we were so close once, but I know someone has to do the right thing. Somebody had to tell the truth about all this. I wouldn’t just go around making stuff up about my own daughter. If someone asks about my motive for speaking out this way against my own daughter, it’s that I really think she needs professional help. I hope she reads this and gets that help … I still love her very much.”
The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday that Zach Smith will meet with the six-member OSU investigative committee this week, and also ask to be reinstated.
“I never thought he deserved to be fired,” Carano said. “So sure, he deserves his job back. How could they not do the right thing? They didn’t have a good reason to fire him in the first place.”
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