Absolutely nothing.
What has changed in the last 24 hours? What good does this news do? Other than make recruits second guess signing with OU tomorrow.
Sorry man, but "we should have let recruits sign with OU based on false pretenses" isn't a PR strategy. It's clear something's going to come out about Smith that ain't good, and that he's coached his last game for us.
Once the University knows that, you have to take action ahead of signing day, right? Isn't it dishonest not to?
You're prioritizing signing day success over being honest with the kids signing about who they'd be signing with.
They won’t play another game of football for three weeks at the earliest. You have three weeks to investigate, and craft your thorough and meaningful response. IF it requires one. If it doesn’t, then wonderful. You did a good job keeping a lid on it. IF you need fire him, then you’ve done your diligence and can fire him. Unless I missed it, the New York Times didn’t drop a bombshell this morning. What was the rush to put out this inane memo? You keep this in house until you figure out exactly what has gone down and are prepared to answer questions or have an actual course of action.
They've got a course of action. It's underway. You're making a baseless assumption here -- that they haven't been investigating this already, and that this came completely out of the blue just because it came out of the blue for you. Bobcatblitz knew about it back in October. No doubt the University did, too.
The memo may read as "inane" but it's basically exactly what a PR agency would tell any University to do about a pending termination as a result of personal-life stuff. Put them on paid leave, share no details, name an interim replacement, move on officially when this is in the rearview. That the press release didn't include details certainly doesn't mean the University doesn't know them. Their decision's been made, and they're following the standard process as a result.