Rally supporting Urban Meyer and criticizing ESPN had dumb signs

A small group of fans met outside Ohio Stadium to support their suspended coach.

A group of Ohio State fans, who certainly do not represent the Buckeye fanbase on a whole, showed up outside of Ohio Stadium to rally for their suspended coach Monday evening. Urban Meyer remains on administrative leave as an investigation continues into his handling of domestic violence incidents involving his former receivers coach, Zach Smith.

Now, there are a few problems problem here.

The first of which being, there’s at least four signs at this thing that reference ESPN. ESPN does not employ the person who broke this story, Brett McMurphy, and it hasn’t for over a year.

But ESPN is still on the hook for the rest of his contract (that runs through August 12) because it was bought out. McMurphy has been reporting news on his Facebook and Twitter feeds for the last few months. In essence, ESPN paid him to break this story in a roundabout way, and doesn’t get to reap any of the benefits of McMurphy’s reporting prowess.

McMurphy will begin working for Stadium on August 13, the day after he has received every cent owed by the four-letter network. It’s a fantastic journalistic middle finger by one of the best in the business. But our friends in the crowd here are not aware of that development, or if they are they likely don’t care.

A little enhancement here shows a sign referencing McMurphy and Mark May (who also no longer works for ESPN) as well as Sage Steele and Paul Finebaum.

Finebaum is a talking head for the network who specializes in college football, and Steele anchors SportsCenter among other hosting gigs. Her reference is linked to the fact that she co-anchored SportsCenter on Friday afternoon when Smith gave an interview to ESPN.

Among the list on that sign, the only straight print “journalist” is McMurphy.

The rally was led by a guy named Tennessee Jeff.

Jeff had some words about the event he put on.

“I want Urban to see this. I want everybody in Buckeye Nation to see this. . . . Listen, man. We’re Buckeye Nation and we’re Ohio State strong, we’re Urban Meyer strong,” he said in the video. “This man has done nothing wrong period, and I wanna show support. That’s all it’s about.”

It’s unclear if Jeff, or anyone else in attendance, will be holding a separate rally in support of Zach Smith’s ex-wife Courtney Smith. Zach’s alleged abuse of Courtney, which McMurphy reported occurred in at least 2009 and at multiple times in 2015, was the impetus for Meyer’s current leave of absence and this subsequent fan outrage.