Police body cam video is a terrible look for Big Ten women’s basketball coach
Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff was arrested for operating a vehicle while impaired on May 6. Footage of the incident released by police is troubling.
Ohio State women’s basketball head coach Kevin McGuff was arrested outside of his home on May 6 and charged with operating a vehicle while impaired.
In Ohio, an OVI charge is essentially the same as a DUI or DWI in other states. Put more simply, McGuff was arrested for drinking and driving.
The charge itself was already troubling for the 55-year-old who has coached the Buckeyes since 2013. But body camera footage of the moments leading up to McGuff’s arrest present an incredibly terrible look for the Ohio State coach.
In the footage released by the Dublin Police Department, McGuff’s condition is concerning.
But that’s where we find McGuff when the video begins, dressed in Nike sweatpants and a windbreaker, sitting in the driver’s seat of a 2013 Toyota Sequoia that is parked in front of the garage of his Dublin, Ohio, house around 8 p.m. Police responded to the scene after another driver called and said they saw the Sequoia strike several curbs and drive through a yard.
For the first 90 seconds of the video, McGuff seems to be fiddling with the door of his vehicle. Eventually, the officer on-scene opens the door. After taking several moments to find his ID, McGuff tells police that he hasn’t been driving and he hasn’t consumed any alcohol. He then tells a second police officer that he just got home, but doesn’t clarify where he’s coming from. McGuff again denies that he’s been drinking.
The Ohio State coach doesn’t offer any details and is answering questions from police in very short, brief and often contradictory statements. Most of his responses come after long pauses or delays. McGuff then admits he was coming from dinner, but again denies consuming any alcohol.
Police then attempt to conduct a few field sobriety tests on McGuff, the first of which is to say the alphabet from D to R without singing. McGuff never gets past the letter D. The officer then asks McGuff to touch his thumbs to his fingertips while counting, which he also fails. The officer then asks McGuff to count down from 63 to 48, which McGuff is also unable to do.
“Tripping you up a little bit?” the officer asks.
“Yeah,” McGuff says while touching his chin.
The officer then asks McGuff to get out of the car and conducts more field sobriety tests. After McGuff is unable to perform a test where he is supposed to lift one foot off the ground while keeping his arms to his side and while counting out loud, one officer tells another on the scene, “I think you’ve got your (probable cause).”
Police then handcuff McGuff and inform him that he’s being placed under arrest for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. McGuff later refused a breathalyzer test, according to the police report obtained by the Columbus Dispatch.
On Tuesday, McGuff did not appear in court but attorney Richard Piatt entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf. During that hearing, a judge temporarily reinstated McGuff’s driving privileges. The prosecuting attorney did not object, noting that this is McGuff’s first OVI offense.
“Please understand that Kevin McGuff is presumed innocent and like everyone else charged with an offense, deserves to have this case resolved on the merits and the facts that actually occurred,” Piatt said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Ohio State issued a statement saying it is “monitoring the situation closely.”
Although no one was harmed by McGuff’s wildly irresponsible and dangerous decisions, it does not absolve him of his actions. While the legal matters will be sorted out in the court of law, Ohio State has to grapple with the court of public opinion. What the video and police report show is one of the university’s highest paid employees acting in a thoughtless and immature manner. According to USA Today, McGuff earned a total compensation of just over $1 million for the 2023-24 season, making him the 15th highest-paid public school coach in Division I women’s basketball. Surely, he can afford an Uber.
What Ohio State now has to decide is whether this event is embarrassing and damaging enough for them to move on from McGuff. Per Land-Grant Holy Land, there is language in McGuff’s contract that would allow the Buckeyes to dismiss him for-cause over this: “A violation by Coach of any University Rules or violation by Coach of any law of the State of Ohio or the United States including but not limited to, Ohio’s ethics laws, as determined by Ohio State.”
It is also worth noting that the former athletic director who protected McGuff during previous missteps, which included NCAA violations that led to wins being vacated and a one-year postseason ban, is no longer there. Ross Bjork succeeded Gene Smith in that job last year.
While Bjork’s work as an athletic director is more known in the college football space (see also: Houston Nutt, Hugh Freeze, Jimbo Fisher, Mike Elko) from his time at Ole Miss and Texas A&M, he also made notable women’s basketball hires at those schools. At Ole Miss, Bjork fired Matt Insell and replaced him with Yolett McPhee-McCuin, who has taken the Rebels to four consecutive NCAA Tournaments and two Sweet 16 appearances. This spring, via the transfer portal, she landed one of Ohio State’s best players in Cotie McMahon. Bjork also poached Joni Taylor away from Georgia to succeed Gary Blair at Texas A&M.
Bjork also has a potential in-house candidate in Katie Smith, who joined McGuff’s staff this past season. Smith — a two-time All-American and one of Ohio State’s greatest players ever — has real coaching bonafides after spending a decade on WNBA sidelines as an assistant and head coach with the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty. As a player, she won two WNBA titles, was the scoring champ in 2001, won three Olympic gold medals with Team USA, was named to the WNBA’s 25th Anniversary Team, and was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2018.
McGuff has a career win-loss record of 531-212, a .715 winning percentage. A former assistant coach for Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame, he turned Xavier into a mid-major power in the late 2000s before coaching two seasons at Washington, then returning to Ohio to lead the Buckeyes in 2013. Since then, Ohio State has won four regular season Big Ten titles and appeared in the Elite Eight once. He was named Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2024.
But right now, with this incident hanging over him, McGuff’s future in Columbus is cloudy.