Ohio State University has suspended its head football coach and its Athletic Director after an internal investigation substantiated their failure to properly handle a football staffer’s domestic abuse allegation.

Now-former Wide Receivers Coach Zach Smith was accused of abusing his wife three years, they divorced two years ago, and Smith was fired earlier this year after an Ohio court granted Smith’s wife a domestic violence protective order.

Urban Meyer, the suspended (but not yet disgraced—OSU still has him on their payroll and in his head coaching role—head football coach said he tried to keep Smith on staff

out of loyalty to former Buckeye coach Earle Bruce, Smith’s grandfather and a man Meyer described as “a mentor and like a father to me.”

Meyer also said of the failure

I followed my heart, not my head.

What kind of heart uses loyalty to an abuser’s grandfather as an excuse for not acting on the abuser’s abuse?