“I didn’t feel that I’d seen high-integrity behavior,” Wadsworth said of Meyer.

He said he was the “lone voice” of dissent in advocating a harsher punishment, but declined to specify what he had proposed or to speak in great detail about the closed-door negotiations, saying he wanted to respect the confidential words of board members.

“Most people were concerned about whether it was a several-game suspension or not,” he said.

“To me,” he added, “there was something altogether wrong about reducing it to a couple of games.”

The state of Ohio and its flagship university have been consumed in recent weeks over the suspension of Meyer after a two-week university investigation overseen by three trustees and three independent members. It concluded that Meyer had failed to fulfill obligations to report the domestic violence allegations against an assistant coach, Zach Smith, to other university officials.

The inquiry also found that Meyer had sought to delete records from his cellphone. And it found that Smith’s behavior, including failure to pay cellphone bills, a stint in rehabilitation for substance abuse and “promiscuous and embarrassing sexual behavior” raised several other red flags. Smith has denied abusing his former wife.

Investigators found discrepancies between Meyer’s account of some events and others’, and in at least one instance suggested that Meyer had lied to them.

“You read the report,” Wadsworth said, “and there’s seven or eight things about emails, memory loss, hearing things five times, and to me, that raised an issue of standards, values — not how many games someone should be suspended for.”

Wadsworth, a retired engineer and executive, is the first of the 20 board members to speak publicly about the matter, which has caused many in the Ohio State community to question the high value the university puts on sports. He is a former board chairman who has been a trustee since 2010.

The board deliberated in a nearly 12-hour meeting last week before the university president, Michael V. Drake, announced the decision at a news conference.

In a statement on Thursday regarding Wadsworth, the university said: “The president and the board of trustees had a frank and comprehensive discussion last week. A wide variety of perspectives were expressed in reaching a consensus. Mr. Wadsworth has been an exceptionally valuable member of the board. His service to the university is deeply appreciated, and we wish him the very best.”

Wadsworth said in the interview that he had left the meeting at the lunch break, a few hours after it began, so he did not know the official result until it was announced, though he said he had a good sense of what it would be.

“It became clear to me where we were, discussing penalties, and I wasn’t ready to do that,” he said, explaining his early departure. “I was in a different place.”

He “had larger concerns,” he said: “I felt that getting into a limited number of games that was a suspension missed the point of a bigger cultural concern about ‘What message were we sending?’”

The meeting began with remarks from Drake, followed by the trustees taking turns offering their own opinions, Wadsworth said.

Although there was talk of there was a “range of options, from doing nothing to firing” Meyer, Wadsworth said, “that is different than deliberating it,” and the board quickly settled on a discussion of a suspension.

The tone of the meeting remained respectful, he said, but he said he felt he needed to resign because he could not defend the outcome and because there had been no public accounting of members’ views.

The university released two emails Wadsworth had sent to Drake and Michael J. Gasser, the board chairman, about an hour after the Aug. 22 news conference began, in which he tendered his resignation.

“I heard enough in the meeting,” he wrote, “to persuade me that I do not want to be a party, through endorsing today’s decision or remaining on the Board, to implicitly or explicitly support current or future actions on such issues.”

Wadsworth said he believed the punishment had come across as lenient, citing several articles published afterward, including a USA Today column with the headline, “It’s Urban Meyer State University Now.”

“I read all these articles,” Wadsworth said, “and I’m embarrassed.”

Wadsworth, whose term would have expired in May, is one of the few remaining board members who were appointed by Ted Strickland, the previous Ohio governor. In June, Wadsworth was the lone member to vote against the 2019 budget.

Wadsworth retired last year as president and chief executive of Battelle Memorial Institute. Battelle, which is based in Columbus, is a nonprofit center that explores new technologies. While at Battelle, Wadsworth managed several U.S. Department of Energy laboratories and was also the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

On Wednesday, Smith, who was fired on July 23 by Meyer and the athletic director, Gene Smith, after a misdemeanor trespassing charge and a protection order against him were reported, broke his silence with an extended, angry thread of tweets. He accused the news media and his ex-wife, Courtney Smith, who had requested and received the order of protection, of misrepresenting events.

He wrote on Twitter: “Let’s talk FACTS since so many people (mainly opposing fanbase’s fans) want to talk,” he said. “1. My kids are suffering because of all this (most important) 2. I never beat my wife 3. OSU botched the investigation and worse the ‘punishment.’”

The Buckeyes, under an interim head coach, Ryan Day, host Oregon State in the season-opening game on Saturday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Marc Tracy © 2018 The New York Times