Joker Phillips, a former head coach at Kentucky who was forced to resign as an assistant coach in Florida in 2014 because of a recruiting violation, has been hired as an offensive quality control coach by Ohio State, a university spokesman confirmed Wednesday for The Dispatch. OSU coach Urban Meyer was not available for comment. Phillips most recently was wide receivers coach for the Cleveland Browns in 2015 and was not retained when head coach Mike Pettine was replaced by Hue Jackson after the season. Phillips’ transgression at Florida, where he was receivers coach and recruiting coordinator, concerned him having an incidental meeting — known as a “bump” — arranged for him with a prospect by a recruiting services reporter during a recruiting dead period in January 2014. After Florida was made aware of it he immediately was suspended from recruiting, then he abruptly resigned for “personal reasons” in April of that year. The NCAA later found it to be a Level 2 violation, defined as being “a significant breach of conduct,” but Phillips was not hit with sanctions that would come into play if he returned to college coaching. Phillips, who has coached at eight colleges in his career, became just the second African-American head coach in the history of the Southeastern Conference in 2010, when he succeeded Rich Brooks at Kentucky. A Kentucky alumnus and long-time assistant there, Phillips had been elevated to the head coach in waiting the year before. But Phillips was fired…
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