Brett McMurphy

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3 • 721 Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 17 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features college football reporter Brett McMurphy, who this week broke a major story on his Facebook account regarding charges from Courtney Smith, the ex-wife of a longtime assistant of Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer. Smith called into question Meyer’s claims he was unaware of a 2015 allegation of domestic abuse against the assistant. In this podcast, McMurphy discusses the timeline of his reporting; how he first contacted Smith; why Smith spoke on the record with McMurphy; what Smith’s reaction was to McMurphy’s questions; the duration of those interviews with Smith, the paper trail that McMurphy tracked down for his reporting including law enforcement records; why he broke this story on Facebook, why he could not write this for another publication because of his current contractual situation with ESPN; his expectations on how many people would read his story, what breaking the story on Facebook says about the traditional mantra that subjects will turn to big media; how Meyer forwarded the story with his responses duringBig Ten Media Days; why he finds Smith believable; whether McMurphy had lawyers vet his piece; why he didn’t reach out to Shelly Meyer; his concern about a negative backlash among some in the Ohio State fanbase; his thoughts on being laid off by ESPN in 2017; why he decided to appear on ESPN properties after they let him go; what his next for him professionally and this story You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the sports media podcast with Richard Dyche. My producer, as always, is Lou Pellegrino.
0:08.2	Our guest today is Brett McMurphy. That name, obviously, is well known this week in sports media circles.
0:16.9	He is a longtime college football reporter and will soon be at stadium.
0:22.9	Of course, Brett McMurphy worked for many years at ESPN.
0:26.0	Also has a long and distinguished record in newspapers.
0:29.7	On Wednesday, he wrote a story on his Facebook account that suggested significant evidence
0:35.6	that Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer knew that a longtime former assistant
0:40.5	coach of his had been accused of domestic abuse in 2015.
0:45.1	Meyer had said last week that he had not heard of the domestic abuse accusations until
0:49.9	recent days.
0:51.2	Courtney Smith, the ex-wife of the former assistant coach Zach Smith, who I
0:56.5	refer to above, said that Urban Myers coach Shelley had extensive knowledge of the abuse
1:02.8	allegations. And if you read Brett McMurphy's Facebook post, his story is backed up by text
1:08.2	messages and on the record reporting.
1:13.1	There are no anonymous sources here.
1:16.6	And Brett McMurphy, welcome to the sports media podcast.
1:18.5	Richard, I appreciate it.
1:20.2	All right, Brett, let's start with this. We're going to get to the process of how you did this.
1:22.9	But I think the biggest question that people asked me to ask you was,
1:29.1	why did you break this on Facebook?
1:31.2	And obviously the reasons behind that are probably contractual given where you worked
1:35.5	and where you will soon be working.
	...

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