An Ohio State University trustee who thought football coach Urban Meyer deserved more than a three-game suspension has resigned from the board.
Former board chair Jeffrey Wadsworth resigned after Ohio State suspended Meyer and athletic director Gene Smith last week following a two-week investigation. It found they tolerated bad behavior for years from a now-fired assistant coach also accused of but not charged with domestic violence.
Wadsworth told the New York Times on Thursday that he alone advocated a stiffer penalty when trustees discussed Meyer. Wadsworth said he left the daylong meeting at lunch, learned the trustees' decision after it was publicized and resigned that night.
Ohio State says Wadsworth, a retired president of Battelle Memorial Institute, was "an exceptionally valuable member of the board," where he'd served since 2010.
But the chair of Ohio State University's board of trustees has praised the process that went into investigating Meyer.
Trustee Michael Gasser says in a Thursday email released by the university that he was proud of the independence of Ohio State's investigative committee. The majority of the committee was comprised of current and former trustees. He expressed pride in the work of outside experts and the board's "deliberative nature" to find common ground on a complicated set of facts.
